


No Blemish But The Mind

by sweetntwenty



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Crossover, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Sexual Content, Swearing, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 55,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetntwenty/pseuds/sweetntwenty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment Sherlock falls from the roof of St. Bart's, John Watson is warped onto the USS Enterprise. Moriarty is loose aboard the ship, and the Enterprise crew has just captured the criminal Khan, whose face is oddly similar to that of Sherlock Holmes. John is trapped in the future, playing one last game with the psychopath who murdered his best friend and the life they once led.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Methuselah

**Author's Note:**

> When discussing our favorite fanfics, we realized that we couldn't find any extensive crossovers that we liked between Sherlock and Star Trek. So instead of waiting for other authors to attempt it, we decided to write it ourselves.  
> Check out our Tumblr for updates on future chapters and Starlock content:  
> sweetntwenty.tumblr.com  
> Also our FanFiction.net account:  
> www.fanfiction.net/u/4893366/sweetntwenty

Sweat trickles down John's neck, pooling beneath his hairline and collecting in the collar of his shirt. The sun is blinding, but he doesn't shield his eyes as he looks skyward - can't move his arms, with the way he's got one frozen and clutching his phone to his ear, and the other clenching and trembling at his side.

Up on the roof of St. Bart's is Sherlock - funny, John thinks, because this is where they met, and now they've come full circle.

"He won't get away with this. Sherlock, Mycroft is on your side, Molly is on your side, Mrs. Hudson is on your side, I'm on your side-"

"I lied about the whole thing, John! I made up Moriarty, I hired Richard Brook. It was all an act." Sherlock takes a deep breath, but John won't let him finish.

"Damn it, Sherlock! Don't let this get to you! We can get through this, you and I."

How John wishes Sherlock would scoff at this last remark, at the idea that another person could influence his own self-confidence, at the idea that John could possibly help him with something personal. All those moments that John flinched when Sherlock dismissed his attempts at connection; what he wouldn't give now for one more eye-roll, one more toss of his perpetually disheveled hair.

But there is no reply.

"Come down," John says into the phone.

"No," Sherlock replies, his voice odd and tinny through the cheap speakers.

"Get down," John says, but it's a sorry attempt at authority. Sherlock was never one to obey orders to begin with.

"Please," John tries again, and there's a flare of static on the other end. Is Sherlock... crying?

"You're being an idiot!" John shouts. "Who cares about what they're saying? You're real. I know you are. You're real to me."

And shouldn't that be enough?

But he can see Sherlock shaking his head, notices with a punch of fear to the gut that his best friend in the universe is toeing ever closer to the edge of the roof.

"Don't," John says warningly. "I swear to god, Sherlock, don't-"

"I'm sorry," Sherlock's saying. "John, I'm sorry-"

Sherlock jerks the phone away from his ear and lets it plummet one, two, three- eight stories towards the pavement. His arms stretch outward and for a moment the clouds part and the sun flares behind him; he is a veritable guardian angel on the roof of St. Bart's and John can't tear his eyes away.

"Sherlock," John calls hoarsely, but his words fall on deaf ears. Sherlock's phone is shattered on the cement, but John can't seem to let go of his own. "Sherlock!" he yells. "Don't! Whatever you're doing, just don't-"

Up on the rooftop, Sherlock is shaking his head. He's made his decision.

And Sherlock Holmes jumps, his coat flailing in the wind, limbs outstretched, and John's phone finally slips from his fingers, and Sherlock is inches from the ground-

A strangled scream rips from John's throat. He knows he's too late but he runs to Sherlock anyway, feet pounding across molten pavement, arms out as if he dared catch him-

Suddenly, electricity skitters along his fingertips, crackles across his bones and lodges beneath his skin. It's high noon and every breath he takes is a laborious one. He feels as if his body is being torn in two, every ligament stretched at the seams and all of his cells being forced to dissect at once.

Trauma-induced shock, the doctor in the back of his head notes, and when he goes blind it convinces him that it's just another part of the process.

\---

"Sherlock- Sherlock-"

John collides into something sharp and heavy, and around him there is the sound of glass shattering. He realizes he's on the floor- not concrete, too smooth and cold for that- and someone's screaming at him.

They've got a Scottish accent, whoever it is. Can't really tell, with the sun flaring so violently, and everything coated with static. John feels nauseous. His whole body aches, his muscles feel strained, and exhaustion consumes him, reducing him to lying prostrate on the floor.

The Scot's still yelling, and John finally pieces together the words.

"What the hell? Who the hell are you?"

"But... I... Sherlock..." John mumbles to himself. His chest constricts painfully, and breathing feels like forcing air through a bellows.

"Shlock?! Shlock the wot?" A balding man with a round face bursts from the bright lights- not the sun, John notices, but harsh fluorescent bulbs. John finally focuses his eyes and is met with the barrel of a gun. His hands instinctively shoot into the air; if nothing else, John has been trained for situations like this.

"I- where am I?"

" 'Where are ye-?' Who the fuck are you?"

"Dr. John Watson, former Captain of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers," he says breathlessly. Some bits of information are just ingrained.

"'Captain'?" the balding Scotsman repeats. "By whose authority have you boarded this ship?"

"SCOTTY!"

An American accent this time. The lights still in his eyes, John shuffles awkwardly on the floor, trying to haul himself to his feet. Scattered around him are sharp metal instruments he cannot name, and to his left lies an upended red toolbox. John's ribs ache and he can already imagine the bruises; he must have run right into it.

"Jesus, Scotty, where'd you pick this one up?"

John flinches as a harassed-looking man in a blue shirt bustles in past the one called Scotty to push him firmly into a chair, shine a flashlight in his eyes, and shove a little machine up his shirt.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" Scotty protests, glancing over at John apprehensively. "'E just swooped in!"

"Excuse me-" John begins.

"He could have flamonidas dysentery, do you know that?" the angry one in blue growls. He squints at the results on his machine, then pulls out what John supposes is some kind of stethoscope, only to proceed to stuff it into his nose. "Or Sicorzhan gangrene!"

"Could you please not-" John tries again.

"-I once heard about a whole ship that came down with it and by the time anyone could warp towards a hospital half the crew's dicks were already rotting off-"

"Get off m-"

"Out of the way!"

The one prodding at John with what he now figures are medical devices sends a death glare over his shoulder.

"Jim, stay back, I still haven't cleared him for Gamma Ten tonsillitis-"

"Knock it off, Bones," the man called Jim orders.

To John's surprise, Bones sighs and obeys.

"Scotty," Jim says, "Care to explain yourself?"

"Captain- I-" Scotty stammers.

Jim's attention snaps to John. "Who the hell are you, and why are you on my ship?"

"That's what I was tellin' 'im! You don't just board the USS Enterprise without some kind of clearance!" Scotty interjects defensively.

John looks between them in confusion. "Ship? Is this a submarine?" Has to be, right? With those clinically white, sloped walls, glass doors, and odd little panels?

Bones snorts and Jim gives John the strangest of looks, as if he isn't sure whether to yell or simply ask if this is all a big joke.

"Wrong end of the universe, mate," Scotty pipes up.

"I think my great-grandfather once rode in a submarine," Bones adds. "Hold on, Jim, I'm going to check him for-"

"No," John says firmly, knocking Bones' hands away. "No more of that! I'm not diseased!"

"Oh? Where are you from?" Bones demands. "I'll have you know that over 75% of the population of this quadrant has had Maeglian fleas-"

"I believe fleas will be the least of our worries if we are this susceptible to strangers warping aboard our vessel, Doctor."

John starts in his chair at the sight of dark hair and a slender figure whose movements speak of calculated grace, whose eyes hold the keenest sense of control and understanding-

"Spock! There you are!" Jim says, and that breaks the spell.

This man with the rigid haircut and the strange, pointy ears is Spock, not...

"Sherlock," John gasps to himself.

"What?" Jim says.

"Sherlock!" And then John remembers everything. Escaping from being arrested by Lestrade, dashing handcuffed together through London at night, seeing Sherlock on the roof of the hospital and watching him dive-

"He's hyperventilating," someone's saying, as the room slides out of focus and begins to darken.

Jim is shouting orders, and John is dimly aware of losing his balance and sagging off his chair. Jim ducks under his arm, lifting him before he can slump to the floor, and in the back of his head he muses that Jim is strangely young and handsome to be a captain.

\---

They're waiting for John when he wakes.

"-dressed in civies," Jim is saying to Spock. "But Scotty said he's a captain."

"Are you suggesting espionage?" Spock replies calmly.

"He's not recorded anywhere in Starfleet's database. Sulu checked twice."

"Suspicious indeed."

"Ah! You're up!" Jim exclaims when John stirs. "Watson, is it?"

"Doctor Watson," John replies snippily. He slides off the bare cot they'd thrown him on, shaking out his stiff limbs. "And who are you?"

Jim chuckles, but Spock stares John down, expression tightly controlled, with his arms behind his back.

"Now, Doctor, would you kindly explain to us how the fuck you got onto my ship?"

"Ship? Where are you sailing?" John asks.

Jim glances at Spock uncertainly.

"What?" John says. "What's wrong?"

"I believe the Captain is simply amused with your use of rather... archaic vocabulary," Spock replies.

"Sailing!" Jim says. "That's funny, though. Haven't really thought about it that way."

"I don't understand," John says.

"We are flying, Doctor," Spock says. " 'Sailing' implies that we are travelling through a body of water rather than a vacuum."

"A vac-" To John's left is a window, and beyond it is nothing but black.

They're joking, aren't they? This is all a sick prank-

"Catch him, Spock!"

"-no, no, I'm fine," John insists, shooing him away. He's feeling rather lightheaded, a little sickly, but he isn't keen on falling unconscious yet again in a room full of strangers. "It's just- you said- Starfleet, right? Starfleet?"

Outside the window, embedded among the black, are pinpricks of light he didn't notice before.

"Space," John says, putting two and two together. "We're in space."

"...you're not from around here, are you?" Jim ventures.

"I am now inclined to return to my first hypothesis: he is not a captain as he claims. Perhaps he is lying about his name as well," Spock says.

"I'm not lying!" John exclaims. "I'm John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers-"

"A convincing story, Doctor, but we are not fools. The Fusiliers have been disbanded for nearly 200 years."

Behind Spock's tightly controlled expression is an infuriating smugness that makes John want to rip off the tips of his pointy ears.

"I- I-"

"John Watson, if that is indeed your name, how did you manage to warp onto our vessel?" Spock says.

"I don't know!" John says. "One minute I was in London, waiting outside St. Bart's for my friend-"

Sherlock.

"Oh no," John says. He remembers now. Sherlock on the roof- "Oh no. No, no no-"

"London?" Jim demands sharply, "What the hell were you doing there?"

"Captain, he appears to be going into shock."

"I can see that, Spock," Jim replies exasperatedly. "Doctor Watson, you alright? Do you want me to grab my CMO?"

"No- don't need- Sherlock, get Sherlock- before he-"

"Scotty informed me that he mentioned the name several times after warping," Spock says.

"Who's Sherlock?" Jim asks. "John, breathe. I need you to stay with me. Breathe."

"Tr-trying, he just-"

"John, who's Sherlock?" Jim asks firmly.

Spock's watching John without a trace of emotion, and John thinks about how much he resembles Sherlock right now, when the consulting detective was more machine than man-

"-you look like him," John says. He accepts Jim's hand on his shoulder, letting it ground him. "It's odd. You look just like him."

"Like who?"

"Not you," John replies. "Spock. He looks like Spock."

"Well, I assure you that our Spock's one of a kind." Jim's talking to John slowly, patiently, like he's a child. He tries not to resent it.

"No." John shakes his head. "It's the way he holds himself. It's the look on his face that's constantly showing off that he knows something you don't. That bastard. Stupid, stubborn bastard."

"Looks like he's got you down, doesn't he?" Jim grins at Spock.

"Me... or perhaps someone else aboard this ship."

For the first time, John sees a glimmer of curiosity in Spock's eyes.

"What exactly does your friend look like?" Spock asks.

John glances at Jim, who nods in encouragement.

"Dark hair," John says, throat dry. "Tall and scarecrow-thin. Cheekbones you could cut yourself on. And... clever. Always clever."

Spock's lips purse into a tight line. "Captain."

Jim glances back, and silent agreement passes between them. He nods.

"Doctor Watson," Spock says, "you are under arrest."

"What?!" John steps back, aghast. "Why-"

"We have reason to believe that you are connected to a high profile intergalactic criminal accused of the conspiracy and execution of terrorist attacks on London."

"You've got to be kidding-" John starts furiously.

"Watch it, Doc," Jim says. His jaw is set, and he reaches for his gun.

"London? I was just there!" John exclaims. "What happened?"

"People died, Doctor," Spock says simply.

Jim points his gun right between John's eyes, and Spock signals to someone behind them. A security guard steps into the room, handcuffs clinking at his waist.

"I don't know anything about that!" John protests. He looks pleadingly at Jim, and the captain seems to hesitate, glancing at Spock for affirmation. Spock, however, does not break his steely gaze.

Resignedly, John accepts the handcuffs the guard slaps around his wrists and follows him out of the room. His mind races; what the hell happened in London?

There's a distracting little twittering ahead. It's the guard, singing under his breath. But it's a tune John knows, a song he's certainly heard before...

"Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother-"

"Is that 'Stayin' Alive'?" John asks incredulously.

"You recognize it?" A familiar drawling voice responds. "Funny, no one else here does."

John's blood runs cold. It can't be. It's not possible.

"You're-"

"Richard Brook." The guard finishes the thought for him, turning around with a lazy grin. "Also known as Jim Moriarty."

\---

John stops in his tracks, acutely aware that he possesses neither a weapon nor even a free hand. How the hell could this be happening? Apparently he's been beamed onto a bloody spaceship; how could Moriarty be there too?

"Oh, come on," Moriarty coos. "Don't want to raise their suspicion, do you?"

John swings his bound fists. They connect with the side of Moriarty's head, but the criminal recovers immediately and sends a punch into John's gut. John doubles over, but Moriarty hauls him roughly to his feet. He tries again, and Moriarty swats him away like a fly.

"You're a liar and a criminal and a murderer-" John starts angrily.

"Accused liar, criminal and murderer," he corrects. "All charges were dropped, remember?"

"Once they find out-"

"Oh, will you tell them?" Moriarty laughs. "The 300-year-old 'Captain' who beamed onto their ship without permission? The batshit-crazy Methuselah currently being escorted to a holding cell?"

"Well, what about you?" Not the greatest comeback, but his unadulterated hatred for the man has made him tongue-tied.

"Oh, John," Moriarty says smugly, "I've been a guard on this ship for five years. I've been with them through thick and thin, I've comforted them when they cried... Hell, I've watched them get so shit-faced they couldn't see, heard them spill their their deepest, darkest secrets, and brought them ginger ale in the morning. Like they'll believe the five-minute man over their beloved Yeoman Brook. Now for God's sake, follow me unless you want more trouble."

John, still stuttering with ire, yields and trails after Moriarty through the winding white-paneled halls of the ship. His heart's now racing in addition to his mind.

"What the hell are you doing here?" John manages through gritted teeth.

"Oh, it's no coincidence." Moriarty walks tall and confidently ahead of John, his slimy voice emanating from a certainly smug expression. John wishes he could see Moriarty's face. Wishes he could punch it, or better yet, take a crowbar and- "Let's just say that you ought to be thanking me for this opportunity. Not many can say they've experienced the luxury of time travel."

"Time travel?!"

"Well, obviously. Johnny boy, open your fucking eyes and look around. Has Sherlock taught you nothing?"

John begins to feel the gravity of the situation: the sudden move from the street to space, the confusion of the crewmembers, the attacks on London...

John's stunned into silence. "...How?" he asks finally.

"It's really not that difficult once you 'familiarize yourself with the technology'," Moriarty says, "I mean, if the bastard in the control room can do it-"

"What year is it?"

"2273 AD. Exactly 261 years from where I left you. And you're awfully lucky, the first experiments with time travel blew up dozens of people."

John rolls his eyes. "Lucky. Yeah, I'd say my current situation shows nothing but a bright future-"

"I also doubt that many can say they're witnessed a friend return from the dead," Moriarty continues, "or at least partially return-"

"What the hell have you done with Sherlock?"

"All in time, impatient one. Here, we've reached home, sweet home." He presses a button next to a tinted glass door, which slides open, revealing a small room. "In you go."

John enters reluctantly. "You won't get away with whatever it is you've done. Not this time."

Moriarty sneers and presses the button again, closing the door. A small opening is revealed in its center. "Handcuffs, please."

John sticks his hands out, anxious to prove his courage and confidence in Sherlock; but he wonders to himself if there's even a Sherlock left to defend.

Moriarty removes the handcuffs from John's wrists, massaging his palms with an aggressive mock-sensuality. John yanks his hands back in disgust, which only causes Moriarty's manic smile to turn into peals of laughter.

"You think you're so brave," he whispers with glee. "So loyal, I admit it's really rather touching. But my dear Doctor Watson, may I remind you that you're alone in a jail cell 300 years in the future with no friends to come to your aid? And what's worse..." He trails off.

John begrudgingly takes the bait. "What?"

"I have access to Sherlock. Or what's left of him, rather. I'd advise you not to make me too angry. You see, I put a lot of effort into this part of the game, and I'd hate to end it early and start from scratch. Sherlock was always my favorite opponent... but you are most definitely rising up the list."

Moriarty backs away from the door slowly, seeming to disappear into the darkness cast by the glass' tint. "Your move, John."

And he's gone.

\---

John sits on his bunk in his clinically white cell, his breath stuttering, desperately willing himself not to pass out again.

Beneath the soles of his shoes, the Enterprise is humming.

The Enterprise. The spaceship called the Enterprise-

"Oh God," John wails. "Oh God."

He paces back and forth. He's got to get out. One way or another, he's getting off this ship. The next time they dock- is that what spaceships do?- he'll connive his way out. Break a few wrists, if he has to, steal someone's gun...

There's a single window in his cell, the diameter about the width of his shoulders. He grips the rim and presses his face against the glass.

Nothing.

Outside is an emptiness that stretches on into eternity. He's gazing at the universe in its purest, most unadulterated form. They are travelling through the remnants of worlds, reduced to ash millenias in the past, and through the breeding grounds for galaxies that will emerge long after they are gone. Most frightening of all, they are travelling through nothing, and he is centuries ahead of his time, and everyone he knows and loves is dead-

Mind reeling, he clamps a hand over his mouth, fighting the urge to vomit. He counts sets of 4, then 8, then 4 again when he trusts himself to lower his hand. The glass is cold against his forehead, and if he stands motionless he can feel the ship vibrating ever so quietly.

...it's all so preposterous, really, if he thinks about it.

It's a flat fact: time travel's impossible. If the technology existed in any form, Sherlock would have mentioned it. Would have pursued it on his own, probably, out of some kind of arrogant belief that he could alter the past and thus improve their present and future. Sounds just like the sort of thing he'd do.

The idea of a spaceship's partially credible, but John still hasn't seen the ship itself yet, just a few lab-bright hallways and fancy glass doors. Spock's ears were a curiosity, but there's a thing called prosthetics.

Then there was Moriarty.

What if the entire thing's just a ruse? Another of those infuriating games the consulting criminal's so damn fond of?

"Drive me into insanity, will he?" John mutters to himself. As if ruining Sherlock's career wasn't enough. As if compelling him to take his own life wasn't-

John doesn't know how, but he stumbles onto the cot before he can collapse.

Damn that Kirk, with his good-cop attitude, and that Spock with his stupid, pointy (and surely artificial) ears. They're just paid, highly-trained actors. Richard Brook's, the lot of them.

Time travel? He lets out a harsh bark of laughter for allowing himself to believe for even a moment that such a thing could ever be true. Moriarty's probably got him locked up in a tin can in a dark warehouse. Maybe, once he gets bored of the "Starfleet" charade, he'll strap some bombs on him, only this time John will be ready, and he'll drag the bastard to hell with him-

"Excuse me!"

John jumps and curses.

There's a young man in a gold shirt, gold like Kirk's, crouching by his door.

John eyes him warily. "What do you want?"

"Well, sir," the man continues, with the heaviest Russian accent John has ever heard, "I just wanted to see how you were doing!"

...he's joking, right?

"How much is he paying you?" John demands.

"What?"

"How much is Moriarty paying you?" John roars, but if the name means anything to him, he doesn't show it.

The young man looks around worriedly. "Quiet, please! I don't want anyone to know I'm here."

"Why's that?" John growls, crossing his arms.

He looks flustered at this. "Technically, you are our prisoner, and as an Ensign I really should not be-"

"-let me out," John snaps, not caring, and certainly not looking to be buttered up by a pretty face, no doubt planted by Moriarty. "Now!"

"Please-"

With a shout, John slams against the door. It's made of glass, or so he thinks, and it ought to shatter- but instead, he's punished with a shoulder full of bruises and a ringing in his ears.

"Unbreakable," the young man says. "To you, at least."

"What the fuck do you want?" John asks again, ears hot with embarrassment.

"My name is Pavel Chekov," the ensign replies brightly, "and I wanted to ask you how exactly you warped onto our ship!"

"How many times do I have to tell you bastards that I don't know?" He could strangle the kid right now, break his lying bones and dump the body at Spock's feet.

"Please do not take it the wrong way, sir-"

"Doctor," John interjects.

"Doctor," Chekov repeats eagerly, "but I was wery impressed!"

"...what?"

With a grin, Chekov sidles as close as he can against the door, all smiles, as if John's a celebrity. "There is only one person with the formula to achieve such a thing. And that is Scotty!"

He must mean the red shirt who pointed the gun before he'd even found his bearings.

"Where did you study?" Chekov asks before he can take his next breath. "MIT? New Delhi? Aberdeen?"

"I-"

"It is quite an anomaly to meet another expert in warp technology, let alone one who is also a man of medicine!"

When John merely stares at Chekov, the kid's smile falters, and for a second he almost feels guilty.

"Have I upset you, sir?" Chekov asks.

"Upset? You're asking if I'm upset?" John growls darkly. "Today I got interrogated by an overgrown elf, handcuffed and thrown into an oversized closet, and I just found out that the maniac who practically murdered my best friend is trying to play one last mind game by convincing me that I'm on a spaceship. In the future."

"But you are," Chekov replies.

"Fuck off."

"But you are!"

"What did Moriarty promise you?" John asks coldly. "Money? Power? Women?"

"Moriarty?" Chekov wrinkles his nose in confusion. "Who is Moriarty?"

"You listen here, you son of a bitch," John says, balling his hands into fists as if he dares strike Chekov down through the glass. "I don't know shit about 'warping' and even if I did I wouldn't tell you how I did it. So you're going to let me out right now so I can strangle that fucking l-" But now the poor kid's looking at him as if he just told him that there's no such thing as Santa Claus, and that little light of excitement is gone, replaced by growing hesitation. "...you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" John tries again, softer this time.

Chekov shakes his head.

"Oh God." John slides to the floor and rubs at his eyes tiredly.

"...I understand that being arrested can be a stressful experience," Chekov says timidly, settling cross-legged on the floor to meet John's eye-level. "Are you hungry? I have gotten quite good at replicating stew."

It almost pisses John off, the way he can't quite figure Chekov out. Chekov's smiling again- trying to, at least, no thanks to John scaring the shit out of him- and he's fiddling with the embroidery on his sleeves.

Harmless.

The kid is harmless.

John can feel it in his gut.

Feeling embarrassed, he clears his throat. "How old are you?" he asks.

"Nineteen, sir."

"That's, ah, that's quite young to be an officer, isn't it?"

"Wery." He grins toothily.

"Can I ask you some things, Chekov?" Because as genuinely clueless as Chekov may seem, it doesn't rule out that being on a spaceship is almost as believable as Sherlock surviving jumping off a-

Ah. Best not to think about that.

"Of course," the ensign replies eagerly, and John can practically see his ears perking up.

"...I'm not from here," John says with some difficulty. He focuses on exhaling.

Chekov nods, wide-eyed.

"The ears," John blurts out, although he's got a hundred-and-one questions buzzing about in his head. "Spock's ears. They're fake, right? Plastic? Or was he deformed at birth?"

"Fake?" Chekov laughs. "They're not fake. He's a Wulcan!"

"Wulcan?"

"Oh, um..." Chekov scrunches his nose in concentration. "Vulcan," he manages over his accent.

"So... an alien."

"That is one way of looking at it. Although, as you noticed, they are quite humanoid."

"And are all Vulcans that much of a stick in the mud?"

Chekov giggles at that, and the sound puts John more at ease. "Yes. Unfortunately. They do not believe in expressing emotions. They have them, although they like to deny it."

"Spock must be a real gem, then."

"You do not like him."

"Reminds me of-" Ah. Nope. Best not to go there. "You wouldn't lie to me, would you?"

"Of course not!"

John believes him.

"So... What Spock said about people dying in London. Is that true?"

Chekov's eager face falls. "Yes, Doctor. A man blew up an important intelligence agency, and attacked Starfleet's headquarters. It was horrible." The simplicity of Chekov's statement unnerves John; this soldier - no, he's too young for that title - this boy can barely comprehend the attack. John's heard such terse comments in PTSD wards, from Afghanistan vets; such an attack would explain why they've been treating him so coldly on the Enterprise.

"Oh," he responds, unsure of what to say. "Why did he do that?"

"He is mad."

John looks down at his feet, the scuffed shoes so often pitied by Mrs. Hudson. A feeling of homesickness overwhelms him - he'd give anything to be back in his flat, sipping tea and listening to Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock bickering about the housekeeping.

"That doesn't make sense," he says shaking his head. "I was just there. I would have heard-"

"Docter, I apologize, but for mastering warp technology in such an advanced manner, you seem to be having a hard time understanding what is going on in the world," Chekov says, "This is the USS Enterprise, year 2273. I doubt you are from this place and time, yes?"

"Yes, but..."

"Time travel is not impossible, Doctor. Improbable, but it has happened before."

John nods.

Chekov turns suddenly, looking down the corridor outside John's cell.

"What is it?"

"Guards. I must not be here. Goodbye, Doctor Watson!" Chekov waves and scurries off.

John presses his face against the glass to watch Chekov disappear around a corner. His head snaps towards the sound of footsteps.

Four guards bearing large guns lead a prisoner, his hands cuffed and his eyes glaring, and four others bring up the rear. Who they're guarding- No, it couldn't be-

"Sherlock," John breathes to himself.

But in the split second that Sherlock marches past his door, John can see that only his body is present; the gait, posture and defiant expression belong to someone else.

"Sherlock!" John shouts, pounding on the glass, but the procession is gone as suddenly as it had arrived. The corridor is empty and silent, and he wonders if it had existed at all.

He collapses defeatedly onto his bunk. Every cell in his body aches with a pain he's never felt before. His eyes close, and there he is again, on the sidewalk in front of St. Bart's. He hears Sherlock's voice crying "I'm sorry," he sees that bloody coat flailing like a cape as Sherlock falls, he feels the pounding of his own feet on pavement as he rushes across the street to the huddled mass...

Curling up with his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, John is acutely aware of how far away he is from home.


	2. Ambrosia

When John wakes, the ship is still humming.

He lies still on his cot, eyes closed, flexing each individual finger and toe, systematically contracting and relaxing the muscles in his arms, then his legs...

It’s a trick he’s used before to combat stress. Usually he does it on a restless night to help him sleep- funny, he hasn’t done it in a while, not since he moved in with Sherlock- and he eases up. A bit. His body is still exhausted from the forced warping, and his headache is stubbornly lingering.

He lets his arm slip off the cot, his fingers brushing the floor. He can feel the Enterprise softly sing to him through the tiles.

To be honest, he’s afraid to open his eyes. With his eyes closed, it’s almost like he’s back in his Baker Street flat, nodding off on the couch by the mantle while Sherlock paces and rails. He can pretend he’s in the safety of his living room with Sherlock close by, typing furiously and muttering half to John, half to himself, and the humming is just that blasted radiator that they meant to get fixed last fall.

But John is thinking too hard, and instead of drifting off, he becomes restless. Begrudgingly, he opens his eyes.

Waking up means accepting his cramped cell, with its bare toilet, sink, and flimsy chair. The lightbulb above him blinks weakly. He rolls onto his side, gazing out his only window at the star-studded black, and sighs. There’s no escaping this.

He sits up and stretches, straining his pained muscles and yawning widely. The corridor outside his cell is empty, and he can hear neither voices nor footsteps. He resigns himself to urinating, washing his face and splashing water on his hair in an attempt to make it lie flat. Then, he considers the facts as he knows them.

One, he is on a spaceship in the future, light-years away from London. Two, Moriarty has something to do with it. And three, Sherlock is there with him. Or whoever it was that had walked past his cell.

The boy last night- Chekov, was it?- seemed so earnest, so honest, and so completely unaware of Moriarty; perhaps the rest of the crew are the same way. Their priority seems to be this terrorist attack in London, and none of them had gone out of their way to make him uncomfortable. Only Moriarty plays mind games involving Sherlock; the others didn’t even seem to recognize the detective’s name. Even though Sherlock would probably disapprove, John decides to keep an open mind about the crew.

 _Sherlock._ John sighs, and once again sits down on his cot, head in his hands. The only proof that the fall off St. Bart’s hadn’t killed him was a look-a-like prisoner on board the Enterprise. Moriarty is not to be trusted, that’s for certain, but John has to get to that man and find out if he was-

Real?

John can’t explain it, but despite the uncanny physical appearance there is no way in hell that prisoner is Sherlock. John knows his best friend, and that wasn’t him. The gait was wrong, for one thing. Sherlock had a complete disregard for the people and things around him; this prisoner’s seeming hatred for his surroundings was so palpable it made John flinch. Sherlock would absentmindedly climb over furniture to get where he wanted; the doppelganger expected the seas to part before his feet...

And then John remembers the furniture.

John hated the way Sherlock would step all over the couch. With his shoes on too, leaving trails of dirt and dust like a bloody cat. Whenever John complained, Sherlock would only smirk derisively in response.

John shuts his eyes, feeling dizzy. To never see that smirk again...

_No. Stop it. Don’t-_

A knock on the glass door startles him.

“Doctor Watson? You alright in there?” Captain Kirk peers into his cell expectantly. Spock stands behind him.

“Yes, yes.” John jumps to his feet. Spock’s eyes are cold and emotionless, as unsympathetic as the day they met. He glares back.

“Get enough sleep?” Kirk asks.

“Sure, yeah,” he replies stiffly.

“How are you feeling?”

Kirk’s questions are loaded, without a doubt. He’s a bit hesitant, scanning John for signs of madness or wrath, looking for a reason not to open the door.

“I’m alright.”

Kirk nods, and glances at Spock for confirmation before opening the door. John silently wonders why a captain would need permission from his second-in-command so often.

The door closes behind the two men, and Kirk sits in the chair across from John’s cot. He motions for John to sit down as well.

“Sorry to lock you away like this, Doc, but until you’re fully cleared we can’t risk you roaming the ship. Make sense?”

“Yes, I understand, but-”

“But nothing, Doctor,” Spock interrupts. “We’ve decided on a few protocols that will prove to us your level of risk as an unregistered civilian riding aboard a military vessel.”

John’s eyebrows furrow. Protocols? If these are anything like the medical tests that irritable doctor tried to administer on him yesterday...

“Spock just means that we’re going to observe you and keep guards on you for a while. Figure things out kind of organically.” Kirk leans back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

So he’s the easy-going type. It’s uncommon for a man of his rank, but John supposes it has to do with his age.

“Alright. When do I get to leave my cell?”

“That is the matter we are here to discuss, Doctor,” Spock says, eyeing Kirk’s casual pose with obvious disapproval. “We would like you to talk to the prisoner we have on board. The terrorist responsible for the attacks on London.”

John looks back and forth between the two. “But I wasn’t there, I mean, I don’t know anything about it, or-”

“That’s alright, we just want to see how Khan reacts to you,” Kirk replies reassuringly.

“Khan?”

“Khan, also known as John Harrison, is an engineered superhuman created around your time. Since the two of you were both in London in the early 2000’s, we thought introductions might be in order.” Spock is still studying him closely. John shifts uncomfortably under his gaze.

“Okay... I guess I could try and talk to him. But what do I say?”

“Anything goes, Doc. Anything this bastard says might be useful at some point.” Kirk’s eyes lock on John’s own, and the earnestness Chekov had exuded last night is mirrored there.

John nods. They stand, Spock pulling a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and snapping them around John’s wrists.

He follows them out of the cell, straining his neck to look down corridors for a glimpse of Moriarty or Sherlock. But they have only turned two corners when they stop in front of a cell, much larger than John’s. Facing away from them is a slender profile in black, contrasting against the starkness of the cell walls.

For the first time, John sees Kirk’s amiable demeanor crack. “Khan,” Kirk says bluntly.

The man turns, and John’s stomach drops. It’s the prisoner he saw the night before.

“Sherlock!” John shouts, throwing himself against the glass. Damn this morning’s doubts. Every inch of the man inside the cell is Sherlock. Every feature on his face, every jutting bone on his lithe frame, the stormy color of his eyes... Disregarding his hair, they’re absolutely identical.

Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock said that once, and that’s all John can think of now. It’s Sherlock. It has to be.

“Sherlock,” he pleads.

The man stares back.

And that is when John senses that as eerily flawless of a copy this man is, there’s something missing.

“Captain,” the man says in a rumbling baritone.

John’s heart skips a beat. He _knows_ that voice. Knows it as well as the back of his hand.

“Are you willing to talk to us today?” Kirk asks exasperatedly.

“As I have mentioned before, Captain, I am never too keen on sharing information with members of Starfleet.”

“You’re in luck. We brought a civilian to talk to you.” Kirk gestures to John. “Recognize this man?”

“He certainly seems to know who _you_ are,” Spock says. John doesn’t miss his tone, heavy with derision.

Khan’s eyes dart towards John with an intensity that almost makes him step away from the glass. John feels the cuffs at his wrists, the wrinkles in his clothes, the stubble on his chin; his weakness must be all-too apparent.

“No,” Khan says finally, regarding John with disdain. “Should I?”

John feels his heart drop- how can this familiar face not see his best friend staring back at him?

“You don’t know who I am?” John’s voice, small and broken, breaks the stunned silence.

Khan glares at him with a coldness that makes his blood turn to ice.

“No.”

“But-”

“Captain, what kind of a game is this?” Khan asks.

“This is Doctor Watson. He was in London around the time that you and your crew were sealed in those pods.”

John’s hardly listening. He tries to catch Khan’s gaze, determined to see Sherlock peering back.

Nothing.

Khan avoids his eyes, not out of fear- that would be ridiculous, the man clearly fears nothing- but complete disinterest. One look at John told him all he needed to know.

“I don’t recall a ‘Doctor Watson’ being part of the research team that created me.” Khan’s eyebrows furrow. He spits out John’s last name like a bitter pill.

“He wasn’t. Doctor Watson-”

Feeling his desperation grow, John interrupts Spock, keeping his eyes on Khan. “I know someone who looks- who looked, I mean- exactly like you. A perfect copy. Well, almost.”

“Hm. Intriguing.” Khan is dismissive, but John won’t give up so easily.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he says, slowly and clearly. “Have you heard that name before?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Think very hard.”

Khan’s expression does change this time, though it’s one of pity, as if John is a lame dog he’d rather put out of its misery. “No, Doctor Watson, I’m afraid not.” Condescension. That, at least, is a familiar tone.

John suddenly becomes aware of how intently Kirk and Spock are watching him. Fantastic. They must think he’s mad.

“Alright. Guess it must be a mistake. Sorry to bother,” he says shortly. He makes to turn away, but Khan stops him.

“Who is he? Perhaps I know him by another name.”

John tightens his jaw. He will _not_ cry, not in front of all of these strangers. “Consulting detective. Extremely talented. He was rather well-known around London in the early twenty-first century for his ability to solve impossible cases.”

Khan sneers. “Just a detective? And here I assumed he’d be someone important. People would actually pay someone else to think for them...” The irony that Khan seems to be insulting himself is not lost on John, but he can’t help but grow defensive.

“He was very important! He saved lives. He stood for something!”

“What exactly did he stand for, Doctor?”

“The- the truth.” John’s stammer is back. “His goal was to- well, he wanted to- to show people- well, not _show_ exactly, but-”

“He stood for the truth, did he? And yet you think I may be this detective in disguise? Fascinating.” Khan crosses his arms, turning away with an air of finality. The conversation is over.

“Come on, Doc.” Kirk nudges his elbow gently.

“You-!” John starts, but Kirk shakes his head, and he falls silent.

As Kirk and Spock lead him back to his cell, he finally realizes what’s missing from Sherlock’s body.

 _No soul_ , John thinks. _He has no soul._

\---

Kirk marches ahead, shoulders hunched and fists held tightly at his sides.

“Captain Kirk has difficulties when dealing with the prisoner Khan,” Spock explains to John quietly. “The Captain’s superior officer, Admiral Pike, was killed during Khan’s attack on Starfleet.”

“Quit apologizing for me, Spock,” Kirk barks over his shoulder. “Khan is a menace to the entire galaxy, and it’s not an overreaction to treat him like the asshole he is.”

Spock’s head bows, and they reach John’s cell. Kirk, however, leans against the glass door instead of opening it. He folds his arms across his chest, sighing and frowning, lost in thought.

Confused, John opens his mouth and closes it a few times before speaking. “Um, Captain, are we- I mean, am I going back-?”

“No.” Kirk makes up his mind. “We’re going to transfer you to a real room, get you some clothes. You’ll still have a guard on you at all times, but...” He shakes his head. “Spock, have Bones do a full medical check-up on him before letting him into the mess.”

Spock looks shocked. “Captain, don’t you feel this is hasty? He’s only been exposed to Khan for a few minutes and we have yet to discover his means of warping aboard the ship-”

“He’s fine, Spock.”

John can cut the awkward tension with a knife. Spock, who has been almost completely devoid of emotion up to this point, looks positively hurt at Kirk’s dismissal.

“...yes, Captain.”

“I’ll see you on the bridge.” Kirk nods curtly and disappears around the corner.

“That was...” John begins, but Spock has regained his composure, and makes it clear that nothing is open for discussion.

“Follow me, Doctor Watson.”

\---

After an introduction to a newer and nicer room, a quick shower and giving up his wrinkled clothes for a blue Starfleet uniform, John finds himself sitting on an examination table in the office of one disgruntled Doctor McCoy- or Bones, as Kirk affectionately calls him.

“Any weird urination streams?” Bones asks gruffly as he peers into John’s ears.

“No-”

“Earwax a funny color?”

“Not since I last-”

“Have you been vaccinated against Lexilitus 17?”

“What-”

Bones hypos him anyway.

John yelps, prodding at the new bruise blossoming on his neck. “Was that really necessary?”

“Who _knows_ what you’re bringing in. Goddamn time travellers,” Bones huffs, as if they’re an everyday occurrence.  

“Well, if that’s all, I-” John makes to slide off the table.

“Doctor Watson,” Bones continues nonchalantly, pulling on rubber gloves with a snap, “when was the last time you had a prostate exam?” He reaches for John with a manic grin.

John immediately leaps off the table. “I’m _fine_ , thank you very much!”

Laughing, and not too kindly, Bones peels off his gloves. “God, man. That last one was a joke. Wow, you are _tense_.”

John winces as Bones digs his thumbs into his shoulders. “Do you have to patch people up often?” he ventures. He grips the edge of the table; Bones is kneading him so hard that he’s starting to slide off.

“You won’t believe the crap Jim gets himself into,” Bones grunts as he starts on John’s shoulder blades.

“Who?”

“Cocky blondie with an interspecies fetish. The captain.”

“Ah-” John grimaces when Bones finds a particularly difficult knot.

“Do you grind your teeth?”

“No.”

“This-” Bones jabs his palm into the point of tension- “-says otherwise.”

“Fine, I used to,” John replies indignantly. “It’s been about a year now. Old habit.”

“Relax,” Bones says. “We’ve all got tics.”

Bones is good at his job- if his job, that is, means causing John pain. He finds a ridge, a little raised sliver of a scar that John hasn’t thought about since the last time he ground his teeth.

“Knife wound,” John cries out, flinching away.

Immediately, Bones freezes. “Let me see,” he says, tugging on the hem of John’s Starfleet shirt.

Steeling himself, fingers twitching and eyes fluttering shut, John acquiesces.

For a moment, Bones is silent, and John begins to panic- is it horrid? Is he deformed, so disfigured that even a seasoned doctor like Bones is having trouble maintaining his bedside manner? Or, even worse, is the wound open once more? He’s bleeding, isn’t he? It’s trickling down his back, along his spine, dripping off the edge of his bed and pooling beneath his shoes-

“Just a scratch,” Bones says quietly, letting John’s shirt fall.

John nods frantically. “Last time I looked- really was- was quite a long time ago, and- didn’t seem-” He twists, right hand groping for a scar just out of sight. It’s a familiar motion. Every morning, he’d drag himself to the bathroom and turn the same way in front of a mirror, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the pearly-white scar embedded parallel to his spine. It didn’t matter if he’d had a nightmare of the moment he was stabbed during his first month in Afghanistan, because after a few weeks it became a habit bordering on obsession, one he couldn’t shake. Until he met Sherlock, that is, and living with the consulting detective meant that every morning he was far too preoccupied with checking if the stove had been left on all night (testing London’s electrical system, Sherlock said) or if one of Sherlock’s Baker Street “Irregulars,” who regularly borrowed their couch, had made off with Mrs. Hudson’s china after all.

He has to find Sherlock. He has to get back to Khan. From the bottom of his heart he _knows_ it’s Sherlock, but why the man doesn’t recognize him, and how he appeared in the world of the Enterprise in the first place-

“Can’t- have to-” John is scrabbling for the scar. Suddenly, he jerks his hand away as if he found some wetness there, and in the haziness of his vision he imagines that his fingers are coated red-

“Woah. Steady there, Watson,” Bones warns, as the machine displaying John’s vitals goes haywire. “Steady-”

“Can’t-”

“Watson!” Bones grips him by his shoulders tightly. John spasms, pulls his fist back and prepares to strike-

And with a shuddering exhale, relaxes.

Bones doesn’t relinquish his hold right away. He peers at John carefully, and only when John slumps in embarrassment does he take a step back.

“...I don’t know what came over me,” John says, voice shaking.

“I do.”

John stares at his hands, clenching feebly in his lap. “That was...” Clearing his throat, he straightens up, willing himself to feel more like the man who demanded his captors call him _Doctor_. “I apologize.”

“Nothing to apologize for.” Bones bustles about, washing his hands and shutting his instruments away in their drawers. He’s a little more careful in his movements now, not as if he’s afraid John will break, but as though he’s realized he may have miscalculated him. John would have loathed him otherwise.

“You hungry?” Bones asks, clapping John on the back. “I can take you to the mess.”

On cue, John’s stomach rumbles. He hasn’t thought about food for what seems like days- although technically, he hasn’t eaten for centuries. He laughs a bit at that. It’s a hysterical little sound, but Bones doesn’t bat an eye.

“Depends. Is the hobgoblin going to be there?” John asks.

Bones laughs. “You mean Spock? Knowing our luck, yes. Come on, soldier. Let’s get some grub in you.”

\---

John can feel eyes upon him the moment he follows Bones into the mess. There’s a table in particular whose officers are doing a poor job of hiding their stares. Chekov is sitting among them, and upon spotting John, he beams. The officer beside him, an Asian man in gold, frowns.

“Sorry. Sulu’s a bit tetchy,” Bones says gruffly. “Ah. Here we are. What’ll it be today?”

Bones has brought John to what roughly resembles a microwave embedded in the wall.

“Excuse me?” John asks blankly.

“Dammit. Sorry. I forgot you didn’t have these back in your time. It’s a replicator,” Bones explains. “It can synthesize just about anything.”

“Ask for cobbler!” Chekov pipes up, having practically skipped over despite Sulu’s obvious disapproval, and bless him, the abuse John threw him yesterday. “It is wery good these days.”

“Go on then, sunshine,” Bones says. “Show him how it’s done.”

“I still don’t under-” John begins.

“There you are!”

John watches a woman in red beside Sulu rise from her seat. Spock has entered the room, and she’s bounding up to him with a smile. John finds the display of affection for the Vulcan off-putting, rather like a puppy trying to play with a stone wall.

“Lieutenant,” Spock replies cordially. He’s assumed his usual position, legs shoulder-width apart and his arms locked behind his back. With one glance he tells John that yes, he has taken note of him, and yes, he is watching.

“So?” The woman raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“So?” Spock repeats.

Her face falls. “You asked him, right? You didn’t forget?”

“I know neither what nor whom you speak of.”

“Spock,” she asks exasperatedly, “are you trying to dodge the question?”

“Here we go again,” Bones grumbles under his breath.

“You remember what today is, right?”

Spock hesitates for a moment. “To forget would be unseemly, given the nature of our relationship.”

She crosses her arms, glaring back at the Vulcan with a fearlessness that John admires. “And?”

“And I decided it was best to keep this matter to ourselves.”

“So you’re still on shift tonight.”

Spock looks away.

“Spock!” she exclaims. “You promised! Our one-year anniversary. You _promised_ you’d take the night off!”

“I did no such thing. I said I would _consider_ it.”

“Who does that? Who actually ignores their anniversary?”

“I did not ignore it, I simply decided that my work takes precedence.”

“You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I assure you I am not.”

“One night! I just wanted one night. Not a day, or a week. A _night_ where your prime objective isn’t to babysit Kirk!”

“I do not babysit him. We simply discuss tactics and the next day’s agenda.”

“In his private quarters.”

“Well, yes-”

“Bet that’s not all you do,” she snaps.

“Lieutenant-”

“Uhura. My name is Nyota _Uhura_. Do you even care for me at all?”

“Lieutenant Uhura, you are behaving irrationally-”

“Go to hell, Spock.” She storms away.

Spock sinks slowly into her vacated seat, ears tinged green. The rest of the officers in the mess, smatterings of blue, red, and gold, know better than to stare, and the buzz of their chatter rises again.

“Here you are, sir,” Chekov says, drawing John’s attention back to the replicator and handing him a steaming plate of cobbler and potatoes.

John follows Bones and Chekov to their table warily, sliding as far from Spock as possible. Spock is silent, fists clenched, eyes trained fixedly on a spare fork. Sulu has wisely edged away.

Bones, however, can’t help but rub salt in the wound. “Quite a woman you’ve got there.”

Spock turns his glare towards the CMO, eyes like darts.

Bones takes it all in stride and helps himself to a piece of John’s cobbler. “You gonna go after her?”

“I am considering it,” Spock replies, voice stiff and controlled. “...you are both lucky that you do not have to deal with the complications of a romantic entanglement.”

“Real lucky,” Bones mumbles as Spock leaves.

“I was under the impression that the Captain knew that today was their anniwersary. Considering that he made such a big deal when they reached six months,” Chekov says, absentmindedly licking the cobbler’s glaze off his spoon.

“Hush,” Sulu chides.

“Where’s your manners? You gonna introduce yourself, Hikaru?” Bones says.

“Hikaru Sulu. Helmsman,” Sulu replies shortly.

John shovels potatoes into his mouth, averting Sulu’s barely concealed animosity. It’s quite good, whatever this stuff is made of. If you put two plates of real and synthetic food in front of him in the dark, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell which was which.

“ _Bet that’s not at all you do!_ ” Scotty mimics in a high, feminine voice as he plops down beside Chekov. “Hey, stowaway,” he says, nodding at John and still chortling. He’s holding a glass of something amber and bubbly, straight from the replicator, and one sip makes him grimace. “Ugh. Ever so slightly toffee. Want some?”

John shakes his head.

“Anyway,” Scotty continues, “that skirmish was excellent. 9.5 out of 10. Almost as good as the time she showed up in his room in a nightie and he told her it was inappropriate to be out of uniform.”

Sulu fights a smile.

“I don’t see what you find laughable about them.” Chekov frowns.

“You daft little schmetterling.” Scotty ruffles his hair fondly and takes another hearty sip. “The Captain and Spock are-”

“-are what, Scotty?” Kirk cuts in with a broad smile.

“The best damn officers to ever fly this vessel, sir,” Scotty replies quickly.

“How are we doing today?” Kirk asks, tall and proud in his Command Gold. “Doctor Watson?”

“Fine, but-” John begins.

“Lieutenant Uhura and Spock had an argument, Keptin,” Chekov says.

“No need to report the ordinary.”

“It was... bad.”

Kirk’s expression clouds for a moment. “Ah.”

“Jim,” Bones says, clearing his throat. “Are we gonna drink tonight or what? We still haven’t celebrated that time I cured Andorian antennal pox.”

“His paper was published in the New England Journal of Medicine!” Chekov whispers to John. “He has become quite a celebrity in the medical field.”

“Damn straight I have,” Bones says. “So? Tonight? You, me, and Jack?”

“Jack Marshall? From engineering?” Chekov asks.

“Finish your pie.” Scotty admonishes.

“I actually...” Kirk fidgets and glances towards the exit. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of. Next time, okay?”

“That’s what you said last time,” Bones grumbles, but the door is already swinging shut behind him.

“‘Stuff to take care of’?” Scotty smirks. “The kind of stuff involving green blood, pointy ears, and thumping headboards?”

“I’m done with you brats,” Bones exclaims suddenly, grabbing his and John’s now empty plates. “Come on, Watson. Time for old men to drink. And none of that synthesized cow juice.”

“I’m older than you, you ass!” Scotty calls after them.

“You sit down,” Sulu orders, yanking Chekov back, who had attempted to trail after them like a puppy.

\---

Two security guards in red follow John and Bones through the corridors.

John resists the urge to look over his shoulder, but the pitter-pattering is always there, just a few paces behind them. They first appeared a second after Spock dropped him in Bones’ office and have been tailing him ever since; in the liveliness of the mess, John had forgotten that Spock still has him pegged for conspiring with a terrorist.

“Beat it,” Bones says grumpily.

The guards glance at each other uncertainly.

“We’ll just be in my room. You can come collect him when we’re through.”

They nod and briskly post themselves at separate ends of the hallway.

“Welcome to my humble abode.” Bones gestures vaguely at the lone swivel chair in the room that serves as an extra pedestal for the clutter spilling over from his crowded desk. He shuffles through his closet, his back to John, and John’s eyes dart towards the door, to near-empty hallways that will take him to Khan-

“Here we go.” Triumphantly, Bones pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses.

The sturdy black label with its unmistakable white script is an unexpected comfort for John. Synthesizers, space ships, aliens and teleportation- at least _something_ hasn’t changed in the last two centuries.

“Whiskey enthusiast?” John asks, because Bones is beaming from ear to ear.

“God, man, are you some kind of maharajah? This is the real deal!” The CMO settles on his plain bed, the sheets a standard-issue gray, and pours them both generous helpings.

John shrugs and downs his glass- far more than a shot, did Bones really expect him to sit and sip it?- with a grimace.

“Quite common where I’m from. You can buy a whole crate for a few quid. Relatively.”

“Of course, of course,” Bones replies. “But this isn’t Earth. This is _Starfleet_. They let us make whatever we like in the synthesizer and most people are happy because they can’t tell the difference. But _I_ can. Scotty too.” He savors his glass like it’s ambrosia. “Had to smuggle this on. This and a few more. I’m planning on stocking up again before we leave on our five-year mission.”

John accepts a refill without hesitation and suppresses a smile at Bones’ obvious approval.

“Are you really from the past?” Bones asks.

“I think so,” John replies. “I’m not sure how, but... I’m certainly a long way from home.”

“Where and when is home?” Bones props his feet up on his desk, heels lodged snugly between dog-eared volumes of _The Physics of Gamma Sei’tn_ and _Reich’s Treatise on Formic Morphology_.

“London. 2012.”

Pensively, Bones swirls the amber liquid in his glass. “That’s a long, long way.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Bones chuckles, looking John up and down. “I suppose I do. It’s happened before.”

“That’s what Chekov said.”

“Silly little lamb. I think he likes you.”

“Can’t imagine why.” John braves his glass. He’s never been much of a drinker, and it runs down his throat hot and heavy.

“What did you do in London? After being an army doctor, I mean.”

“How’d you...?”

“Never relax, do you?” Bones motions towards John’s rigid posture. “Military man through and through.”

“I suppose it comes out during stress.” John shifts uncomfortably, hyper-aware of the way his spine won’t allow itself to conform to the gentle sloping of the mesh chair, and his feet, planted an exact shoulders’-width apart. “But I... I was the partner to a consulting detective.”

“Never heard of that. Then again, I was never a history buff.”

“It’s not...” And John has to laugh, because he supposes it _is_ quite ridiculous. “My partner made up the job himself. Whenever the police failed, which was often... we’d step in.”

“Vigilante justice? CIA?”

“Better.”

Bones takes his word for it.

“What was it like back then?”

“Are you asking if we drove horses and buggies?” John scoffs. “If we dumped our shit in the street?”

“I’m a doctor, not a historian.”

“We had cars.” John eases into the chair, forcing his back to rest against it. “Cars and mobile phones and television. It was comfortable enough.”

“Comfortable and boring. You haven’t gone to Saturn yet, have you?”

“Nothing but the moon.”

“I can’t imagine that.” Bones frowns. “I can’t imagine living on a planet and not being able to just... leave.”

“When you grow up in a world where space travel is basically an impossibility, I suppose you don’t think much of it.” John’s starting to feel a bit heady now, his limbs gaining the tell-tale pliance as the alcohol takes its effect. To his relief, Bones mercifully retrieves a bottle of soda from under his bed. It’s dark like cola, but with a strong air of licorice, a drink sweet enough to make him overlook just how much whiskey Bones tips in afterwards.

They clink glasses and Bones finishes his with an ease that John struggles to match.

“Tell me more about that partner of yours,” Bones says.

“He-” John stares into his glass, at the fizz loosening from the sides and dissipating at the drink’s surface. Is Bones drunk yet? Or at least incapacitated enough that John can slip out the door, find Khan’s cell, and-

What?

Let him out?

Then where would they go?

“Watson?”

John blinks. “Sorry. I was just...”

Bones has that look on his face again, the same one from when he saw John’s scar. Not fear, not pity, only...

Understanding?

“Sherlock. His name was Sherlock.” John inhales sharply. He will not cry, not now. He shouldn’t have drank. The whiskey’s getting to him already, tapping into that vulnerable little place that’s finally starting to process that he saw his best friend commit suicide, that’s starting to panic because he’s been dropped into another universe and he has no clue how to get back. “Bones- Khan, he-”

“Watson-” Bones takes his glass and sets it firmly on the table. “What’s wrong? Did you just say... Khan?”

“I know him.” The words tumble from John’s mouth before he can stop himself. “I know him, and that’s not him. He’s Sherlock. My partner. From London, from 2012, and for some reason I’m here, and he’s here, and he doesn’t know who I am, and-”

A knock at the door abruptly ends the conversation.

“Come in,” Bones calls, and John struggles to compose himself. “Yeoman Brook,” greets Bones, sending John’s stomach churning.

Blood boiling, his hand twitches for his glass, fighting every urge not to smash it over the man’s head-

“Sorry, Doctor McCoy,” Moriarty says flatly, “but I’ve got orders to bring the prisoner back to his cell. Past his curfew, you see.”

The madman’s demeanor has transformed completely in the presence of a Starfleet crew member- his stands firmly, rather than shifting and slouching; his lips relax, rather than curling into a sneer; his fingers clasp one another behind his back, rather than fiddling with his clothes or drumming with calculation. But John recognizes the insolent look in his eyes, the gaze of superiority Moriarty wears when he feels he must communicate with anyone beneath him...

“Look, things were just getting started-”

“It’s a direct order from Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy.”

Bones sighs. “Well, I guess it’s getting late. Thanks for the company, Watson.” He smiles gratefully.

“Of course, Bones. Anytime.” John endures the dizzying transition of one, not entirely sober, who must learn to stand on his own feet again, and regretfully follows Moriarty out of the room.

Once in the corridor, he begins whispering angrily.

“What the hell have you done to Sherlock? He was a completely different person this morning and I swear to God if you’re any part of this-”

“Oh, John.” The drawl has returned, and the psychopath leans lazily against the white, sloped walls. “You really need to have things explained to you, don’t you? Can’t figure anything out on your own. It’s a wonder Holmes put up with your stupidity for so long-”

“Alright, fine, your intellect astounds me!” Sarcasm drips from John’s voice. “Feeling sufficiently flattered? Your ego’s been stroked enough, you mad, narcissistic-”

“Sherlock is dead.”

John’s heart skips a beat, and he feels his hands go numb. “What?”

“Well, for all intents and purposes he is, anyway.”

The next sound John hears is a loud thud against the wall of the corridor, and he realizes he’s holding up Moriarty by his neck against the white paneling. So much for numbness; through his veins runs pure hatred and liquid courage.

“Tell me what you’ve done. _Now_.”

Moriarty’s tinkling laugh fills the hallway. John’s guards are nowhere to be found. John tightens his grip around Moriarty’s throat, but the madman only responds with a Cheshire Cat grin.

“But then the game would be _over_ , John,” he whines. “Can’t you just accept the fact that your boyfriend is gone? It would make things _so_ much easier on you-”

“Sherlock isn’t gone! He’s still there, I just know it.” A second thud echoes through the corridor as Moriarty’s body drops to the ground. Massaging his neck, he looks up at John with a peculiar expression. For all of John’s bravado, Moriarty is completely unperturbed.

“Fine. Let’s go see that precious detective of yours. But I tell you...” Moriarty’s practically singing with glee. “That pretty shell doesn’t hold such a pretty mind anymore.”

In silence, the two men walk to Khan’s cell. A large panel has sprung up over the glass wall.

“Had to cover him up,” Moriarty sighs wistfully. “He was too much of a distraction. Messing with the rookies, ruining Captain Kirk’s blood pressure...”

Moriarty yanks John to a side entrance.

“Be good, Johnny boy.” The criminal pats his head lightly. “Don’t get too discouraged.” He pushes John into the cell and locks it behind him.

Eyes adjusting to the brightness of the room, John looks wildly for Khan. A toilet, table, two chairs and a flimsy cot - from which a slender figure is rising.

“Doctor... Watson, was it? What is it now?” Khan flops into a chair, drumming his fingers on the table in annoyance.

John opens his mouth to speak, but his response leaves his mind in a flash. Those eyes, stabbing and seeking and calculating his every flaw, not so different from the way Sherlock would always-

He needs to get a grip.

“Have you come to interrogate me again?” Khan continues. “There’s nothing I can tell you. Told that to your captain this afternoon when he came in yelling. Comes in every other day, just like clockwork.” Khan examines his long nails. “But he was preoccupied with God knows what, and left quickly, thank goodness.”

“He’s not my captain.” Sherlock would constantly fiddle with his nails too, picking out rosin and London grime.

Khan’s eyebrows raise slightly. “Oh yes, I forgot, _you’re_ not Starfleet.”

John’s had enough. “Look, I know you. I’m sure of it. And this,” he gestures to the cell around him, “this isn’t you! You’re the greatest consulting detective London’s ever seen, the greatest-” His voice catches in his throat. London. “You can’t have done it. You can’t have killed all those people.”

Khan looks him dead in the eyes. “I did.”

Tears spring to John’s eyes. “Why? Sherlock, you’d never-”

“Quit calling me that, will you?” Khan rises from his seat in anger. “I’m not this ‘Sherlock’ you keep referring to. I know who I am and what I’ve done. You won’t trap me with your sorry excuse of an interrogation.”

John doesn’t understand. How is this possible? This man in front of him was his whole life, once. Does it count for nothing?

“Are you crying?” A burst of dark laughter reverberates in the cell. “Who on earth was this detective? To be so damn important to you... one might think-”

“You’re my best friend!” John yells. “And I thought you were dead! I saw you fall!”

There is a long silence. John takes a breath, then sits in the folding chair across the table from Khan. “We lived together for over a year. Flatmates, professional partners and friends. We worked cases that the police couldn’t solve. Don’t you remember? How begrudging Lestrade was towards you?”

Khan lowers himself into his chair with a sardonic smile. “Was he really?” he mocks.

“Moriarty!” John shouts. “You must-” He stops. Moriarty’s just behind that door, and mentioning his name could compromise them both. The threat could be a bluff, but he’s not ready to take that chance.

He switches tactics.

“Mycroft, your brother. You hated him. Every one of your actions was designed to piss him off, to stick it to his sensibilities. You spent thirty years of your life with Mycroft a stone’s throw away-” An eye roll makes him stutter, and he changes the subject again.

“Mrs. Hudson. Our landlady. She took care of you like you were her own, even though it wasn’t part of her job-”

Another shake of the head.

“Molly. The lab tech. Had such a crush on you, fought every hour to get you to notice her, my God, she was obsessed-”

“Like someone else I know.”

Cheeks flaring, John reaches for the one person he never wanted to mention. “Irene Adler. ‘The Woman.’ She was just as brilliant as you, and the only person to ever defeat you. And somehow, also the only person to ever turn you on. You kept her cell phone for ages, and you’re not the sentimental type-”

“I’m sensing a bit of envy.” Khan speaks carefully, turning every word over in his mouth before spitting it out. “Were you two romantically involved? It would explain _a lot_ -”

“No! No, of course not.”

“Mmhmm.” Khan reaches across the table to lightly caress John’s hand. Warnings flash in John’s mind, but he finds himself unable to move. “I bet you were. I understand that sort of thing, you know. How close you can get to those living with you, the familiarity of family without all of the ugly history. I’d do anything for my friends... kill, even. How far would you go, Doctor?”

John gulps and tries to respond, but no sound can escape him. Khan’s face moves closer and closer to his own, until they’re nearly touching-

In one swift motion, Khan leaps across the table and knocks John off his chair and onto the ground. One hand around John’s neck, Khan twists John’s right wrist, nearly breaking it as he maneuvers himself over John’s torso, pinning his arms with his knees. A light kick to John’s groin renders his legs weak, and Khan’s grip around his neck tightens.

With his arms immobilized, John scrabbles uselessly at the floor. A low voice hisses in his ear, “This was almost too easy, Doctor Watson...”

This can’t be it. To to be strangled to death on a starship, years and years away from home. Sherlock would never hurt him. Sherlock wouldn’t-

“This will be a nice warning to the rest of your Starfleet-”

A door bangs open, and suddenly Khan is gone. Gasping for air, John hears maniacal laughter ringing through the cell, and feels himself being dragged to his feet. Another door slams behind him, and the corridor comes into focus. A crazed, ecstatic face looms over him, blocking the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead.

“Convinced yet, Johnny?”


	3. Tornerai

_“-and I told him it made absolutely no sense to arrest the grocer. Poor fool was color blind, it would be near-impossible for him to drive straight to Kensington with three dogs in his trunk. One of them was a bloodhound who had just given birth, so naturally, you see my point. But of course Lestrade had to- John, are you listening?”_

_John upsets his teacup and saucer, and watches fresh stains bloom across Mrs. Hudson’s lace doilies. “Sorry.”_

_“She’ll be cross. We’ll have to buy her those lambskin gloves after all.” Sherlock sighs and steeples his fingers. “A curious business. Almost as curious as the case with the seven feather dusters. Do you remember that one?”_

_“Blog them all, don’t I?” John replies._

_“Yes. Yes, you do.”_

_And Sherlock gives him one of his rare smiles, a begrudging little quirk of his lips that John will never admit fills him with a sense of satisfaction._

_“Do me a favor, will you, John? Ring up Mycroft. Anthea will pick up, of course, and try to mislead you by claiming her fat gaffer’s ill. If you threaten her life, the Thames will rise- she’s got connections of her own, that bloody hellcat- and the Serbian orphans under the pier will drown. Yes, yes, the only way to do it is to tell her a joke. A good one, not the nonsense you find under lids of pop. It’ll have to be something about Mycroft so she gets the picture. Tell her you’ve found that goose that lays golden eggs, the one that lives in Box Five at the Orpheum. Mycroft was always fond of that st-”_

_“Sherlock?”_

_“Yes, John?”_

_“This isn’t real, is it? You’re not really here.”_

_Sadly, sorrowfully, Sherlock reaches for John’s hand. It’s cold as ice. “Oh, John-”_

“Doctor Watson?”

John jolts up in bed.

Chekov pokes his head into the room and waves. “Good morning!” he sings cheerfully.

“What time is it?” John rubs his eyes blearily.

Sherlock. He had been dreaming of Sherlock. It had made sense in the moment, for some reason. The Thames and the feather dusters and Sherlock sitting across from him as they used to. But he should have realized- they had ruined Mrs. Hudson’s doilies long ago, and she had staunchly given up crocheting altogether. As for the case with the feather dusters, it had never happened, but once they found the carcasses of seven pigeons arranged in a circle in the park.

From the beginning, John knew it was a dream. Sherlock’s hair was different, for one thing. Straight and immaculate like Khan’s, a jarring sight when paired with his frayed bathrobe and its folds askew over the arms of his chair.

John never wanted the dream to end, and maybe his desperation was ultimately his undoing.

He tries not to be mad at Chekov as he drags himself to the sink and douses himself with frigid water. He tries not to be upset when the navigator chatters far too loudly for the early hour. And most of all, he tries not to remember the way Sherlock reached for him in his dream, and how for a moment the pressure was enough for him to believe none of this had ever happened.

“I’m in charge of supervising you today!” Chekov chirps.

“No guards hounding my every move?”

“Just me.”

He supposes that’s a blessing.

He can’t be angry, not when Chekov looks like Christmas came early, and the feeling of Sherlock’s hand on his own is starting to fade.

“Scotty and I have been arguing,” Chekov says as he leads John through the winding halls to the mess. “He thinks zat when faced with a Quadro-Nine Nexuzeine star, zhe Enterprise would simply erupt into flames and disintegrate in under a minute. His calculations are incorrect. He has an unfortunate habit of misplacing his decimals, and zhe Enterprise would, in fact, be pulled into zhe star’s orbit and _zhen_ catch fire, and fall towards it like a meteor.”

“Any chance of that actually happening?”

“Once again, zis is where Scotty and I disagree. Quadro-Nine stars are difficult to locate on radar, and by zhe time you notice one, it would be too late. But zhe odds of us actually encountering one are 10.73%, according to Scotty. It is actually 9.86%, but he was getting belligerent, so-” Chekov stops. “Is zat Doctor McCoy?”

Bones, who had just soundlessly slipped out of a room and was attempting to furtively creep down the hallway, freezes. His head snaps towards Chekov’s voice, and he immediately pales. “Shit.”

“That’s strange. Isn’t zat zhe Keptin’s quarters?”

John raises an eyebrow at Bones’ unkempt hair and a tell-tale bruise peeking out from beneath his Starfleet collar.

“Chekov!” Bones hisses. He glances up and down the corridor, which is thankfully empty, before advancing on the young officer. “Chekov, I swear to _God_ if you tell anyone what you just saw, I will-” He sighs and massages his temples. “Just- just keep it to yourself, alright? Be discreet.”

“Keep what to myself?”

“You’re kidding.”

Chekov looks between Bones’ unnaturally unkempt state and Kirk’s room, eyes widening as he finally understands what’s being insinuated.

John silently notes that it would have probably been wiser if Bones had simply walked away.

“Tell no one!” Bones growls, threats left to the imagination. “John, watch him.” A pair of officers in blue are headed their way, and Bones, tugging his shirt back into place, darts off.

“Did you know about zhis?” Chekov rounds up on John, mouth still agape with shock.

“Since Day One,” John replies, not as surprised as Chekov seems to expect. “Come on. Show me if that replicator can make ham and eggs.”

\---

“You’re hiding something,” Scotty says, eyes narrowing at Chekov over his porridge.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” Chekov replies, eyes fixated on the Starfleet insignia emblazoned on the engineer’s chest.

“No, you definitely have something to say. What is it? Are my assistants fondling in the closet behind the radiator? Did Jim decide to fire me? Or did you walk in on Spock and Uhura again?”

Chekov crosses his arms.

“Are you not telling me because you’re still mad about that Quadro-Nine star? I showed you my calculations. You’re not the only genius around here.”

“Zhis has nothing to do with our disagreement.”

“Chekov,” Scotty begins testily, “aren’t we friends? Good friends?”

“Leave him alone.” Sulu sets his food down beside Chekov’s, shooing the navigator aside to make room on the bench. John doesn’t bother greeting him.

Scotty jabs his spoon at Chekov. “But he knows something we don’t!” he exclaims. “Something good, or he would have cracked already. What is it, Pavel? Is it Kirk? Did you see Kirk and Spock... _you know_.”

“What?” Chekov, genuinely confused, looks to John. “But that wouldn’t make any sense, because this morning we saw-”

“This is great,” John declares loudly, spearing a slice of ham on his fork. “Whatever this is made of. So great. Can’t tell the difference.”

“I can.” Scotty frowns. “That’s why I go for the tasteless stuff. The way they try and mimic salt is horrendous.” He grins suddenly. “So. Watson’s in on it too!”

“I am not.” John stabs his egg.

“Liar,” Sulu says, his unconcealed animosity making John’s cheeks burn.

“Go on, then,” Scotty urges. “What’s Chekov hiding?”

But Chekov’s attention is elsewhere. He’s glancing at a girl across the room - a brunette, tall and lithe - and the sight of her makes him blush.

“You dog,” Scotty pounces. “You’re fooling around with her! When were you going to tell me?”

“I’m not!” Chekov replies indignantly.

“Red shirt- what is she, a yeoman?” Sulu asks, interest conspicuously piqued, hackles raised like a suspicious older brother.

“None of your business.”

“What’s her name?” Sulu prompts.

“Christine Wieniawska.” Chekov stares into the depths of his pudding as Scotty cackles with glee.

“Burke’s assistant, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Nearly a decade older than you too.”

“She is six years older.”

“Sulu likes rounding up,” Scotty says.

“I do not see why her age is of any concern to you.” Chekov swirls his pudding with as much aggressiveness as he can muster.

“Oh, _ceci_.” Scotty throws an arm around the navigator and draws him close. “We’re just looking out for you.”

Chekov pouts. “It does not feel zat way.”

“I don’t like this,” Sulu says sternly. “How long has this been going on?”

“Nozhing is going on!” Chekov exclaims.

“Then what were you getting all flustered for?” Scotty demands. “How far have you gone? Has she taken off her top?”

“You can’t trust these Starfleet girls,” Sulu adds. “Most of them will let you take them to bed and leave before the night is out. You don’t want that.”

“You don’t know that, Hikaru.” Scotty grins conspiratorially at Chekov, who manages to extricate himself from his grasp, only to have his cheeks pinched with a smothering affection. “That could be _exactly_ what he’s after.”

Sulu wrinkles his nose. “Don’t be so crass.”

“He’s a man! And a Starfleet one at that. You really expect him to saddle up with the first doll he sets his eyes on?”

“First. That’s my point, Scotty. _First_.”

“Sentimental,” Scotty scoffs. “That’s what you are. And there’s no point. If Pavel wants to lose it to this Wieniawska then you’ve got no right to try and hinder him.”

“Your first time is one of the most important moments in your life!” Sulu exclaims. “I’m not going to let him throw it away on a Yeoman who’s transferring to a new ship the second we finish this business with Khan! Just because you had your first time in a broomshed at Aberdeen-”

“It was a proper dormitory, you ass,” Scotty declares loudly, “and I was sixteen and it was glorious. I say he ought to go on and court her. It’s the cream of the crop here on the Enterprise. It would be hard to go wrong.”

“Don’t go near her, Pavel. Am I clear?” Sulu orders.

“You’re not his father and he’s not a maid,” Scotty counters. “Pavel, do as you like.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when this started? You haven’t... fallen for her, have you?”

“You are both seeing zhings zat are not there!” Chekov groans. “I like her. Zat is all!”

John clears his throat, and the three officers jump, having forgotten in the heat of the moment that he’s been having breakfast too. “So, uh, are shipboard romances common? You’re all so isolated, and I imagine that it can get... awkward.”

“It’s only awkward if you make it awkward,” Scotty replies easily. “Not to brag or anything, but I’ve made my rounds on the lower-east deck.”

Sulu snorts. “Which is the exact opposite end of the ship from the engineering room.”

“Play, but play it safe, lads.”

“Spock and Lieutenant Uhura are the longest relationship aboard zhis ship zat I know of,” Chekov supplies, grateful for the change in subject, as minor as it may be. “Zhey behave professionally, so I do not believe zhere have been any problems.”

“Because lowering the crew’s morale by fighting in the mess _isn’t_ a problem.” Bones slams his tray onto the table. He clambers into the bench across from John and Chekov, searching for any sign that the rest of the table know where he had been last night.

“Morning,” John says, although space travel is still disorienting and it’s always impossible to tell what time it is. There’s a pale smudge on the black collar beneath Bones’ blue uniform, and if John hadn’t happened upon him this morning, he wouldn’t have noticed it’s a stain from the concealer over his bruises. It’s a perfect match to his skin, too perfect to have been a one-off favor from a female officer. Bones must have his own makeup, then, which means he’s done this with Kirk before.

Divulging secrets with a glance for the mere sport of it is something Sherlock would do, and it makes John queasy. He pushes his plate away, suddenly sickened by the clotting puddles of yolk.

“So? What are we tormenting Chekov about today?” Bones asks, still glancing between the crewmembers with suspicion.

“He was acting shifty this morning,” Scotty replies triumphantly, “but we badgered it out of him.”

“Oh?”

John is the only one who seems to notice that Bones is holding his breath.

“He’s got a friend. A _special_ friend, if you get my drift.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Sulu says crossly.

“Exactly. I do not!” Exasperatedly, Chekov finishes his pudding and snatches up his dishes. “Scotty, when you decide to act your age, I will be on zhe G Deck. I have finished zhe new analysis on nucleosynthesis zat you requested.“ He marches off to bus them, and his genuine indignation would have been enough to make Scotty guilty if he had remembered to wipe the chocolate off his chin.

“Look, there’s Uhura.” Scotty nods towards the woman in red who had argued with Spock the day before.

“Another target? So soon?” Bones comments drily.

“Why isn’t she sitting with us? She’s not... _miffed_ , is she? Whatever for?”

“Take a wild guess.”

Scotty gasps theatrically. “No! About- you know-?” He waggles his fingers, mimicking Spock’s pointed ears. “It’s all a bit of fun! We don’t mean anything by it. Not _really_.” When Bones scowls and Sulu simply looks unimpressed, he sputters, “well, she brought it upon herself! I can’t be the only one here morbidly fascinated with her affections for that green-blooded-”

“Doctor Watson!”

A sudden shout makes John jump. The mess hall quiets, several heads turning to stare at their captain in the doorway, his first officer lingering behind him.

Kirk reddens a bit but marches purposefully to John’s table. Slowly, the mess resumes its buzzing - an outburst from their captain is a far more serious matter than a lovers’ quarrel, but this only seems to involve the addressee.

“Khan is asking for you. Something about a London connection?”

“Captain, I swear, I had nothing to do with those attacks-”

“Not _present-day_ London,” Spock clarifies. “The London of _your_ era.”

Spock says “ _your_ era” as if John came from a barbaric sort of place, with witch-burnings and leeches and rampant disease. He’d give anything to smack that expression off Spock’s face, but now isn’t the time.

“Of which I’m sure you’re an expert,” John says coldly. He turns pointedly to Kirk. “What about London?”

“Apparently, the two of you might have a mutual acquaintance. Bastard wouldn’t tell me the name. Would you come with us, please?”

“Sure.” Not that he has much of a choice.

Bones is resolutely staring at a salt shaker to avoid making eye contact with the captain. Scotty looks positively flabbergasted; he must have thought John really _was_ a bumbling stowaway. Sulu, on the other hand, wears an expression of vindication. He had never really trusted John, and now he has evidence that the doctor could be a terrorist after all.

Rolling his eyes at the lack of support his newfound companions offer him, he mumbles a quick goodbye and follows Kirk and Spock out of the hall.

The panel over Khan’s cell is gone today, and the man in question is occupying the same chair from the night before, when John was nearly strangled. John wills himself to be brave, wills himself to face this monster in the guise of his best friend, though he can feel the shell around his own heart beginning to crack.

“Why the restraints?” he asks Kirk, gesturing to Khan’s hand- and ankle-cuffs.

“Apparently he tried to assault one of the guards last night. Videotape cut out, but maybe he was messing with the camera too.”

Moriarty’s doing, no doubt.

“Doctor Watson.” Khan greets him with a slow nod. “Won’t you come in?”

“I think we’ll stay out here, Khan.” Kirk answers for John.

“Captain, I believe I called this meeting to speak with Doctor Watson, and Doctor Watson alone,” Khan replies icily.

“Look, Khan-” Kirk starts angrily.

“Captain, it’s alright,” John interrupts. Eyeing the restraints, he continues, “I’ll go in and talk to him. Maybe something of use will come of it.”

“Close physical proximity may be a more useful condition for interrogation, Captain,” Spock interjects. “An increase in psychological equal-footing, if you will.”

“Fine,” Kirk sighs. “Guard, please.”

A guard posted at the end of the corridor lets John in. John is wary this time, searching for any sign that Khan could attack again.

“What’s this about London, Khan?”

Khan stretches, systematically cracking his neck, then his knuckles, then his wrists, never taking his eyes off John. He’s being sized up again, although he can’t imagine what’s left to deduce, unless Khan is simply cataloging every way he can possibly kill him.

“Won’t you sit down?” Khan gestures towards the seat opposite from him with an eerie graciousness that makes John hesitate.

“Do what you like, Doc, but I’d stay as far from the guy as possible.” Kirk, scowling from outside the glass, folds his arms in defiance. Spock does the same, and although John is sure the action is purely subconscious, Khan makes a note of it.

“How _cute_ ,” he coos. “Tell me, Captain, when you return to Earth do you have to keep him on a leash or do the Terrans simply trust that you have him trained?”

Immediately, Spock drops his arms to his sides. His face takes on a greenish tinge- a Vulcan blush. The muscles in Kirk’s jaw tighten.

“London,” John says firmly, unwilling to lose the argument to a pissing contest. “You wanted to talk about London.”

“Yes. I do.” He regards John contemplatively for a moment, then sharply turns his gaze to Kirk and Spock, as lethal and unforgiving as a cobra. “Rather curious marks on your neck, Captain. Did your Vulcan put them there? Can’t imagine how he fit that into his schedule, since he spent most of yesterday chasing his Lieutenant.”

“Captain-” Spock begins.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kirk growls, but John, for all his inside knowledge, isn’t the only one who can see the sloppy patches of concealer coating his neck.

“They passed my cell yesterday. I must admit I find it oddly satisfying to hear a Vulcan apologize.”

“Captain,” Spock says through gritted teeth, “it is obvious we are not wanted. Khan will not speak if we are present.”

“If you try and-” Kirk raises a threatening finger. “Don’t you dare hurt him,” he snaps. “Whatever you’re planning, don’t. We’ll be right around the corner and if we hear so much as a-”

“Peace, Captain.” Khan smiles, and the sight makes John’s skin crawl. “No harm will come to him today.” He gestures at his cuffed limbs with a shrug.

Begrudgingly, Kirk and Spock leave, and then John is alone with Khan, fighting the urge to bolt from a cuffed man. As ridiculous as his fear may be, John’s neck is still sore from the day before, and he has a creeping suspicion that Khan can break out of his restraints if he simply desired to.

“Alone at last, Doctor Watson.”

“What do you have to tell me that’s so important that you don’t want Kirk and Spock here? You know they’ve got cameras recording everything we say, right?”

“Of course, of course,” Khan replies impatiently. “I don’t have anything classified to share with you. I’ve just grown bored of them.”

“Bored,” John repeats, voice cracking.

“They’re so predictable now,” Khan sighs, unable to understand why a single word has John at his limits. “Even baiting them doesn’t hold the same charm.”

“So now you’re going to fool around with me.”

“That’s the idea.”

“I don’t understand. You tried to kill me yesterday and now you’ve basically invited me to tea?”

“A man can have a change of heart.”

“You don’t seem the type to do so.”

“We’ve only just met. There is much you don’t know about me.”

For once, John says nothing.

“I thought it might interest you to hear,” Khan continues, “that I knew a doctor from your time. He worked at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.”

“St. Bart’s,” John says. “You’re joking. St. Bart’s?”

Khan raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”

It can’t just be a coincidence.

“Do you- do you remember St. Bart’s? You were there, last I saw you. It was where we met. And you were there, on the roof-”

“Oh God. Not this tedious _Sherlock_ business again.” Khan rolls his eyes. “Do you think of nothing else?”

“Think about it! What are the odds? There has to be some kind of significance to this. You’re remembering-”

“Once again, I don’t _know_ you!” Khan interrupts. “I’m talking about Michael Stamford. A genetics specialist.”  

John blinks. “What?”

“Doctor Watson, have you heard of the Augments?”

“No, but- what was that about Mike?”

Khan frowns. “You knew him.”

“Yes, I- we went to medical school together! He introduced us! He’s the reason we were living together.”

“Old chum of yours, was he?”

“I don’t understand what Mike has to do with any of this.”

“Doctor Watson, he created me.”

Incredulously, John opens his mouth, then shuts it again with incomprehension. “What?”

“He engineered us.”

“Engineered what, exactly?”

“A new race of superhumans. Augments, as we’re called. Superior in every way.”    

“And you think you’re one of them.” And John wants to laugh because that is _completely_ something Sherlock would say.

“I _am_ one of them.” Khan lets out an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose a history lesson is in order. In the early 2000’s, a group of scientists got together. They were sick of the violence and destruction humans had created in the world, and they decided together than a new race of humans might not be entirely out of order. Of course, parallels to Nazism made it so they couldn’t perform any experiments publicly. With a group of private investors, they set out to make these super-men and -women underground while maintaining respectable public reputations. Your Mike Stamford, as I recall, led a double life as a professor at St. Bart’s.”

“He _was_ ,” is all that John can say.

“Traveling all over the world,” Khan goes on, “these scientists found the best of the best. The strongest, the smartest, the fastest, anyone genetically mutated just enough to be considered above-average, able to withstand their experiments and worthy of transforming into such a superior being. I’m one of the earliest that were created. A prototype the rest were based on. I may not be as strong as the others, but...” He pauses, scanning the purple bruises on John’s neck. “I get by. Even a Vulcan in his prime is no match for me.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” John says. “I knew Mike Stamford.” Good-natured, perpetually content, predictable Stamford, who put mustard on everything, ordered the same Kronenbourg every time they met at the pubs, and was regularly in bed by 11:00.

“Clearly, you didn’t. This project- I was his life.”

“Surely, if you remember Mike- you must remember who you were!”

“I do,” Khan replies simply. “John Harrison. Barrister, married with two children in Richmond. Not sure what happened to the wife and kids after I left, but her father was rich so I expect she got along well enough.”

“Are you absolutely sure? You could have been-”

“Will you give up with this Sherlock nonsense already? I have memories of my entire life, and I promise you that you were no part of it.”

“I don’t believe that!” John exclaims, though Khan’s words have cut him deep. “There has to be something- your violin! Did you ever play the violin?”

“Once.”

“You had a Stradivarius. A real life million-pound Strad that you took off from someone you met in Cardiff for a few quid. You used to follow me around the flat with it. You were constantly making up silly little songs to pester me, like ‘Here’s John drinking tea’ and “Here’s John scowling’ and an especially obnoxious one whenever I’d bring home a girlfriend. You had a theme song for Lestrade, another for Mycroft, a ridiculous, high-pitched one for Molly that would make me laugh until I realized how cruel it was. I pointed it out, and you never played it again...”

Khan cocks his head to the side, listening, his expression unreadable.

“Once there was something wrong with your violin. You’ve never let anyone else hold it before. You’d hide it behind my dresser the second you realized Mrs. Hudson would be going around with a feather duster that day, and you knew she’d never go into my room. I was always tidier than you. But one day, it was broken- you wouldn’t admit it, but I think you had relapsed again the night before, and you were too high to realize how tightly you were holding it. But you were busy, and I was there, and you sent me off to get it repaired. Do you understand what that meant to me? During Christmas you left it on the coffee table while you snuck out for a smoke and pitched a fit when Lestrade set his drink down too close. But you trusted me while you were away. Me. You loved it.”

John waits. Still nothing.

“I never... I never really liked opera.” The scar on John’s back is burning. He grips the sides of his chair, fighting the impulse to twist and reach for it. “You loved Puccini, Monteverdi, Wagner... You would play in the living room sometimes, by the window while I read. _O Mio Babbino Caro_. That one was your favorite. And you would play other things I’d never heard of and you’d look at me when you were finished and ask me what I thought of them and I never-” John shakes his head, clears his throat. “I don’t know why, but it was all I could think about after I lost you. Silly things, like how I shouldn’t have gotten so upset every time you didn’t run to the grocer’s when I asked, or gotten cross when you left your things lying about. I should have paid more attention to your music. After a song you’d stop and look at me and I’d just... nod. Brush it off. And one time I caught you, with a look on your face, as if I’d...” John takes a deep breath. “I didn’t realize. I didn’t understand just how important it was to you until you were gone. I treated it like a trifle.”

And this is when John breaks.

The shock, the grief, the frustration, the loneliness- every feeling John’s bottled up since he was forced onto a starship crashes upon him now, and then he’s reaching for Khan, fists curled into his shirt, praying desperately to see some kind of recognition in his eyes... but there is nothing. Not sympathy, contempt, or even his usual pity. Khan is still silent, still watching, and John wants to scream that he can’t be a superhuman if he isn’t human to begin with.

“Goddamn you,” John snaps, shaking him. “ _Goddamn_ you. Are you even listening? Do you have a heart, or did those scientists take that away too?”

Khan is unmoving, inscrutable, and it’s absolutely infuriating. John’s hands are shaking, his heart hammering in his chest, and they’re inches away from each other, and he notices that Khan’s lips are slightly parted, and all John can think of is how much he looks like Sherlock-

Suddenly, John kisses him, winding his fingers in his dark hair.

Khan gasps against him, letting out a sound of muffled protest, but John only tightens his grip, holding him still. The chair groans as Khan shifts against his bonds.

“Don’t-” Khan growls.

“You remember me, don’t you?” John pleads. “You remember us? You have to. Sherlock-”

“I’m not-”

John kisses him again, and this time, to his surprise, he feels Khan reciprocate.

He doesn’t dare open his eyes. He tries not to think about Khan’s hair, too fine and without Sherlock’s curls, and his passive doll’s gaze. Khan is nipping at his bottom lip and then he’s biting back twice as hard, slipping his tongue into Khan’s mouth, hands roving down his chest, beneath his shirt, but Khan starts pulling away and-

“John,” he whispers against his skin.

John freezes.

“John,” he says again, more urgently, and when John opens his eyes, Sherlock is there, his consciousness fleeting and struggling and thrown asunder.

“...I never told you my first name,” John realizes, heart rising with elation. “I never-”

Suddenly, Sherlock convulses, reeling away.

“Sherlock-” John cries out.

“Get your hands off me,” he hisses, face contorting with malice. He is Khan again, and John becomes just another Starfleet stranger. “Get away from me,” he snarls with such vehemence that John slowly backs away, out of the cell, slamming the door behind him and letting himself slide to the floor.


	4. Tulaberry

Once in his cell, John throws himself on the bed in restless joy. The Enterprise envelops him in its ceaseless thrumming, steady and secure, as if it had been waiting for him to return.

He closes his eyes and brushes his fingers against his lips.

He had kissed Sherlock, and Sherlock had kissed him back. Just when he began to believe all hope was lost, Sherlock had remembered him, and Moriarty, Kirk, the entire crew- they were all wrong.

But the elation doesn’t last.

Sherlock had only existed for a second, replaced by an alien who snarled and spat and shook him off with revulsion.

The thrumming becomes a droning, loud and insistent, white noise overwhelming his senses until all he can feel is the wound on his back splitting, sticking him to the mattress.

Kissing Sherlock didn’t mean anything. There’s no surefire way to get past Khan again, and-

“Hey, Doc?”

Kirk’s leaning on the glass door.

“Captain.” John bolts up, rubbing his eyes.

“Mind if I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Kirk once again takes a casual position in the only chair in the room, propping his legs up on the footboard.

John shifts his weight uncertainly as Kirk’s fingers rap a ponderous rhythm against the armrests.

“So!” Kirk exclaims suddenly. “After Spock and I left, what happened with Khan? Did he give up any more information?”

John realizes with horror that there are cameras installed in Khan’s cell. Did Kirk see them? Will he be locked indefinitely in this room, or shoved out an airlock?

“Oh, um, yeah, actually. Not about your London though. I mean, the London now. He was talking- we were talking about London in my time- our time- the- 2012?”

“Huh.” Kirk nods, but John can tell he’s unconvinced. “Look, Doc. The tapes were erased again. It looks like the cameras in Khan’s cell are perpetually broken, as our luck would have it. Now I’m trying to ascertain exactly what happened today, and this bullshit won’t cut it.”

John blinks. “‘Bullshit’?”

“This ‘London, 2012’ thing!” Kirk rises from his seat, fury written across his features.  “You’re hiding something, I can tell, and to be perfectly honest I think you’ve been lying about this time-traveling crap too. Now I want answers, dammit!”

“Captain, I-”

“ ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ Khan Noonien Singh. Did you know, when I first heard of him, his name was John Harrison?” Eyes blazing, Kirk advances on John, who backs into a corner with his hands raised. “I’ve got an Admiral up for treason, a ship running out of steam, a superhuman with twenty names leaving behind a trail of bodies, a war with the Klingons, and you.” He kicks the chair, and John flinches when it crashes into a corner. “So who are you, Doctor Watson? Are you working for Marcus? For Khan?”

“I’m not working for anybody!”

“Don’t play games with me.” Kirk grabs fistfuls of John’s shirt and slams him against the wall. “Who are you?”

“John Watson-”

“Quit fucking around!”

“I’m not! I’m John Watson-”

“It’s Marcus, isn’t it? You’re his agent-”

“No!” John shoves him away roughly, and for a split second Kirk looks surprised- had he not expected John to fight back?

John tenses, waiting for Kirk’s fist to swing.

“No.” Kirk stops himself. Sighing, he paces back and forth in the small cell, shaking his head in self-beration. “I’m sorry, Doc. Just… just tell me what Khan said.”

Cautiously, John lowers his hands. “He mentioned a doctor that he knew in London, thought I might know him. But I didn’t.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, yeah.”

Kirk’s still skeptical, but retrieves the fallen chair and assumes the position he had taken before. “I’m…”

Ashamed.

John hadn’t expected that.

“I’m tired,” is all Kirk says. “There’s a lot going on right now. Everything’s imploding at once and Starfleet will never be the same. I don’t like...” He swallows thickly. “I don’t like not understanding.”

“I haven’t lied to you about a thing,” John says. His voice doesn’t waver.

Kirk nods and rubs his eyes. “What’s the doctor’s name? The one Khan mentioned?”

“Harry... Hooper.” In case Moriarty’s listening in, it’s best to keep real names out of it.

It means nothing to Kirk.

“You were close to him? Whoever you think Khan is,” Kirk continues awkwardly.

“He was my best friend.” When Kirk merely crosses his arms, glancing critically between John and the barren walls, John ventures, “Are you alright?”

“It’s just this Khan business. I can hardly sleep at night. And then Spock-” Kirk bites his tongue.

“What is it?”

“He’s being an ass.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Kirk looks at him incredulously.

“Sorry.” John lowers his eyes. “...Sherlock was the same way.”

Begrudgingly, Kirk allows himself to be looped back into the conversation. “I doubt anyone could compare to Spock.”

“Superiority complex? Emotionally detached? Absolutely bloody difficult to work with?”

“I don’t think there’s anyone in the universe who could match up to Spock.”

“You just haven’t met Sherlock.”

“No, I haven’t.”

They’re back to square one. With a sinking heart, John remembers that Kirk was never his friend.

The captain of the Enterprise stretches and jumps to his feet with a businesslike efficiency. “That’s all I had, Doc. See you.” He shuts the door softly behind him.

With Kirk gone, the droning of the Enterprise escalates to a roar. John lets himself fall back onto his bed, shuts his eyes, and wills himself to dream of Sherlock and his flat again.

\---

“ _Psst_!”

John jumps. It’s Chekov, smiling toothily, bearing an armful of afghans and pillows, and unexpectedly, John’s jacket that had been confiscated when they transferred him to this room.

“I’m sorry, sir! Did I disturb you?”

“No. No, just come in.” Stomach churning, John slowly eases into a sitting position. What’s come over him?

Chekov pauses. “Are you alright, sir?”

“I’m fine-” A sharp pain flares across his abdomen, and his hand flies, clutching his shirt.

“Sir-”

“I said I’m fine.” John waves him off. He forces himself to take long, steady breaths, and soon the queasiness subsides. “What’s that?”

“For you, sir. I thought you might be cold, as zhey did not give you much. Also, your belongings have been inspected and zhey have determined zat you have not smuggled anything dangerous onto zhis ship. Zhey decided that long ago, but... for a guest, you are not being treated wery well.”

“I’m a prisoner, not a guest,” John replies, harsher than he intended.

Chekov fidgets apprehensively before settling on, “I know how uncomfortable a cell can be. Zhis blanket is one of zhe few handmade items aboard zhis ship, and when you live in a place where everyzhing is synthesized, it can be a great comfort to…” He shrugs. “If it is not to your liking I can just-”

“No. No, it’s fine. That’s…” John clears his throat. “That’s very kind of you.”

With a bright smile that manages to worm its way into John’s heart, Chekov arranges his gifts into a neat little pile, John’s jacket folded on top, and settles unbidden onto the bed beside him.

“Also…” From between the folds of the afghans, the navigator produces a tin box shaped like a star, containing squares of chocolate. “For you!”

John stares at Chekov and the tin.

“It’s real,” Chekov urges, reminiscent of Bones with his smuggled whiskey. Chekov watches John keenly as he selects a square and takes a bite.

“It’s good,” John says, when he realizes what Chekov’s holding his breath for. “Fantastic.”

“I hoped you’d like it!” Chekov bounces lightly on the mattress. “Sulu got them for me the last time we had leave in San Francisco.”

“Is it contraband?”

“Yes,” he says, with a little bubble of a laugh that makes John feel old.

Truth be told, the chocolate is rather ordinary. John’s certainly had better, but like the whiskey, it grounds him to know that some things, like this recipe, haven’t changed.

“Chekov.”

“Yes, sir?”

“...thank you.”

Chekov only shrugs. Incredible. The kid really doesn’t know what he’s doing to John, that these little displays of kindness are challenging a lifetime’s worth of suspicion against the human race.

“Tell me about your world.” Chekov curls up against his small collection of blankets, watching John expectantly.

“That’s a lot to cover.”

“Zhey are saying a lot of zhings about you, you know.” Chekov picks at the afghan’s stitches, threading his fingers through the geometric stars blazing across a swirling expanse of blue and black. He toys with it with a fondness that makes John wonder- had he knitted it himself? Or had someone else made it for him, handed it to him the night before he dedicated his life to this ship?

“What have you heard?”

“Zat you know Khan.”

“Spock tell you that?”

Chekov does not reply.

“I do know him.”

“Doctor-”

“He’s my friend. My best friend and roommate Sherlock Holmes.”

Chekov blinks, twines his fingers tighter into the yarn. “I do not understand.”

“He’s an Augment.”

“Yes, we know zat. But you are from the 21st century. How-”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.” John groans and buries his head in his hands. There’s a light touch on his shoulder- it’s Chekov, gripping him gently, and he throws all caution to the wind. “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how my best friend doesn’t remember who I am and has all these memories of a life that I’m not a part of. All of a sudden I’m here, and he’s a criminal, and you’re all telling me he’s killed people, and he’s done enough to have Kirk after his head. I have nothing to do with Khan. I’m not a- a _terrorist_ ,” he spits the word out, just as Spock would have done. “I want nothing to do with Starfleet. I’m here for Sherlock.”

Calmly, Chekov nibbles on his chocolate.

“I tell you all that, and you’re lying in my bed like… like it doesn’t matter,” John says incredulously.

“It doesn’t,” Chekov replies simply. “I know what kind of man you are, and I’m not afraid of you.”

“You believe me?”

“I know zat time travel exists. I know of the Augments and the scientists who created zhem. It is not a stretch to believe zat your friend was kidnapped for zheir experiments, and eizher preserved for centuries, or sent directly to zhis time. It is in our history. He must have been brilliant, yes? From what I have read, zhey only took zhe best of the best.”

“Brilliant doesn’t begin to cover him.”

“Tell me about him.” Chekov hands him the tin.

That’s another subject that’s near-impossible to tackle. “...one look,” John decides to say, running his fingers across the pointed rim. The paint is chipped, coming off and rolling onto his fingers, revealing the silver beneath. “One look was all it took for him, and he’d know absolutely everything about you.”

“How?”

“He was observant to a fault. He’d look at your hair and know where you’d been last week, and from the shoes you were wearing he’d somehow figure out you had a row with your mother and were expecting to have another that very night. An eye twitch over tea in the morning would tell him you were waiting for the phone to ring. If I opted for oatmeal instead of a muffin, he’d know I recently got turned down, and I was either self conscious about my weight or just too grumpy to really eat. Deciphering the mundane was not a challenge. With a glance, he knew everything about everyone. And he was never wrong.”

“I cannot imagine being zat way,” Chekov says with awe. He’s wrapped himself up in his spangled blankets, toying with the zipper on John’s jacket. “To go day by day without a single mystery.”

“Mysteries were what he lived for. He put those skills to good use as a consulting detective, and I was his partner.”

Without being prompted- Chekov’s eager expression is a strong hint- John tells him about the Hounds of Baskerville, Sherlock’s fixation with the rabbit that glowed in the dark, and The Woman in Belgravia. Chekov is attentive, asking questions and positing his own theories for the cases, and impressed back into silence when John reveals what he and Sherlock, after dodging the likes of Sally Donovan, Lestrade, a meddling Mycroft, and countless bullets, had actually discovered.

“Have you ever killed someone?” Chekov asks when John has recounted all he can bear and is left to stare at his hands.

“Yes.”

“I meant after the Fusiliers. When you were with Mr. Holmes.”

“Yes.” And John remembers the cabbie, felled with one perfect shot through two windows. “Have you? What does the Enterprise actually do? Military, aren’t you?”

“Zhe Enterprise is zhe most celebrated ship in Starfleet. Our primary goal is to explore uncharted territory, and seek out and contact alien life. Starfleet itself is run by zhe Federation, concerning itself with defense, diplomacy, research, and as I mentioned, exploration.”

“Then what are you doing with Khan? You’re not conquistadors. Yet he’s your prisoner.”

“After Khan’s attack on Starfleet, zhe Keptin requested zat we be sent to capture Khan. We were actually ordered to destroy him, but zhe Keptin decided that it would be fairer to take him back to Earth to be put on trial.”

“We’re headed for Earth?”

“Yes, sir. We do not currently have zhe means to warp, or we would be zhere already.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“I do not know.”

“Life sentence or death, isn’t it? For what he did.”

“I… I cannot say.” The young officer can’t look at him.

“How long until we get there?”

“Two, three days at most.”

Feeling as if he’s been strapped to yet another ticking bomb, John slumps against the wall, feet dangling off the edge of the bed. “Chekov-” he begins.

“Doctor Watson-” Chekov starts at the same time.

“Could you-”

“I’m just doing my job, sir.” And Chekov shrinks back, rife with guilt.

“But-”

“Please.”

“I…” Chekov sighs. “I am not even zhe one piloting zhis ship. Zat is Hikaru’s job.”

And Sulu hated him the moment he arrived, so that rules out that option. “You’re close, aren’t you?” John tries anyway. “You could-”

Chekov shuts his eyes. “Please.”

Tremulously, watching his only door slam shut, John relents. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not be.”

His ability to forgive is astounding.

“Tell me about you,” John says. “Where are you from? Or were you born on this ship?”

Mercifully, Chekov awards him a chuckle. “I was born in Pushkino, 30 kilometers northeast of Moscow. When I was fourteen I enrolled in Starfleet Academy. It was either zat, or an engineering school in St. Petersburg. Life in space is a lot more interesting zhan one in snow, so I chose zhe Academy. I graduated in three years- I could have done it in two, but zhey were not yet assigning anyone new to zhe Enterprise, and zat was what I wanted- so I waited.”

“Do you ever go home?”

“You are asking about parents.”

“I suppose I am, yes.”

“Zhey have been dead for a while now.”

“Ah.”

“I spent most of my life with my aunt and uncle in Tomsk, a town very far from zhe capital. My uncle owned a delicatessen and my aunt was a dressmaker, so zhey were relatively well off. And zheir three children were old enough to watch zhemselves, so I was left alone to do as I liked. Zhere was not much to do in Tomsk except go to zhe library, but it was very small. My parents had left me some money, and although my aunt and uncle were instructed to manage it until I became of age, zhey let me have enough to buy a computer. I made a point to learn one or two zhings a day.”

“And now you’re here.”

“Now we are here.”

“ _Watson!_ ”

A sudden yell from down the hall makes Chekov bolt off the bed with terror. John tries not to laugh when a harassed-looking Bones comes into view.

The doctor bangs on the door once. “Chekov! What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to bring Doctor Watson some...” He falters.

Flinging the door open with enough force to knock down ten men, Bones enters, grabs Chekov by the collar of his shirt, and shoves the navigator out behind him.

“Go see Sulu or something.”

“Is Hikaru looking for me?”

“Does it fucking matter? Now out!”

John winces as Chekov shuffles down the hall with the expression of a kicked puppy. “Dammit, Bones, was that really necessary?”

But Bones only commandeers John’s chair and stares resolutely out the window. He crosses his legs, foot tapping in the air erratically, and runs his fingers haphazardly through his hair.

“...Bones?”

“I’ll apologize to him later, alright?” Bones replies gruffly. “I just need to... What are you doing now? ...dumb question. You’re our prisoner. Let’s go drink, shoot some darts, eh?”

“Am I allowed? The last guard told me I had a 21:00 curfew. And something about private quarters...”

Bones scoffs. “What will they do, put us in time out? C’mon, the whiskey won’t drink itself.”

\---

Within an hour, the two men are well on their way to getting thoroughly plastered. They’re playing a casual game of darts in one of the officers’ rec rooms- this one’s usually empty, Bones informs him, because it had once been home to a rabid Tribble population, and was generally considered to be bad luck ever since Scotty, through Chekov, spread the rumor that it was haunted. John’s winning, but not by much, and Bones has taken to cursing him affectionately whenever he scores.

“... so I say to Spock, good thing Chekov didn’t try to eat his weight in _tulaberry_ pies!”

John laughs as Bones misses the board again.

The hurt in Bones’ eyes earlier gnaws at him; he’d come in grumpier than usual. He decides against his better judgment to pry.

“So, Bones, that thing with Chekov... what was that?”

“Oh.” Bones sighs. “I just wasn’t in a great mood is all. Shouldn’t have taken it out on the kid, though. He deserves better.”

“Any reason for the mood swing? You seemed okay at breakfast.”

“Breakfast. Hah. The trouble started before then, Watson, old sport,” Bones slurs. He leans jauntily against the pool table and drops his dart.

John frowns. “Are you talking about this morning? Chekov and I didn’t tell anyone.”

Bones cuts John off with a wave of his hand. “The morning was fine. Better than usual, actually. I’ll spare you the gory details, but since you seem to have an idea of what’s going on-”

“Sort of?”

“Let’s just say things aren’t as great as they were before this damn paint stained my collar, okay?”

“Okay.”

The door rattles.

“Shit! Might be a guard. Get in the closet!”

“The what-”

But Bones is already hustling John into a cupboard. The door doesn’t click shut properly. Pressed uncomfortably against a vacuum, John can still manage to see the pool table through the crack.

Someone crosses his vision, stoops, and picks up the dart Bones had dropped, examining it curiously.

“Spock, I _need_ to talk to you.”

Kirk?

John covers his mouth with the crook of his elbow, muffling the sound of his breathing.

With delicate fingers, Spock places the dart calmly on the ledge. “Captain, you’ve made it clear that this is a _personal_ conversation you intend to have. There are no laws in Starfleet mandating that an officer must subject himself to the whims of his superior when they do not concern this ship or our duties.”

“Dammit, Spock, cut the ‘Captain’ crap for a minute. We’re friends, aren’t we? You’re upset and I’m trying to help you. That’s what _friends_ do.”

Bones shifts against John in the dark.

“I appreciate your concern, but the situation between Lieutenant Uhura and myself is a private matter. I would prefer not to discuss it.”

“I saw you after Nero destroyed Vulcan. It’s not wrong for me to check up on you when bad things happen, right?”

Spock does not reply.

“Bottle it up inside, then, like you always do.” Kirk throws his hands up in exasperation. “You’re half-human, you can’t pretend that heartbreak doesn’t bother you. Goddammit, Spock, will you admit that I’m right for once?”

“Captain, I do not see the purpose behind this conversation. Lieutenant Uhura and I shared a romantic relationship for a year, and it has ended. We will continue to attend to our duties as Starfleet officers. It is a simple concept to grasp. What else is there?”

“I’m just worried about you. A year is a long time to be with someone. It’s commitment.”

“I assure you that I have the situation completely under control.”

“It’s not easy being dumped. Trust me, I’ve been there-”

“Lieutenant Uhura was not the one who ended our relationship.”

Jim pauses. “What? Are you saying…?”

“Vulcans do not lie, Captain. You know this.”

“Jim. My name is Jim.”

“Jim.”

“I’m sorry if chasing you here overstepped my boundaries. I’ve just been so wound up lately. I wasn’t thinking.”

“We would have spoken about this eventually. I am accustomed to your forwardness and take no offense.”

Kirk chuckles. “...I care about you. You know that, right?”

“I suppose it is necessary for you to ensure that your officers are in proper psychological condition.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I…”

“How long are you going to run from me?” Kirk whispers. He reaches across the pool table, hand closing over Spock’s. Spock doesn’t pull away. “Why did you leave her?”

“You know why.”

“But I want to hear you say it.”

“You ask much of me.”

“I just need to know that this whole time, you and I… that this wasn’t entirely one-sided. That I didn’t make it all up in my head.”

Swiftly, deliberately, Spock presses his fingertips to the side of Kirk’s head, a gesture that John does not understand. Kirk inhales sharply, eyes blown wide.

“You- you really-”

Spock silences him with a kiss.

John’s cheeks burn and he pulls his head back so that the two officers are out of view. But he can still hear the breathing, the rustling of uniforms and the undoing of buckles. Soon the breathing turns to moaning and whispering; there’s a soft thud as someone falls on the pool table. He wants to cover his ears, give them the privacy they believe they have. But one arm is pinned to the closet wall, and the other is hooked through the the hanger rod to keep himself from falling.

Through the slatted light, John can see Bones, whose eyes are tightly shut.

“My room,” Kirk’s saying now. “Come on.”

The doors slam behind them a second later.

Bones kicks his way out of the closet. “Coast is clear,” he says brusquely.

“Bones-”

“Jim suggested today that we end things,” Bones blurts out. He staggers against the wall, eyes unfocused, still drunk. “Not that there were things to end.”

John extricates himself carefully from the closet, shaking his numb arms and the paper streamers from his shoes. “Sounds complicated.”

Bones fishes out the dart, which had been knocked into one of the table’s pockets, and flings it blindly at the board. He misses completely, and it falls lamely to the ground with a clink. “We shipped off for Starfleet on the same day. Sat right next to him. And then we were roommates, and after that, the Enterprise... It was all so _convenient_. Funny thing is, before you and Chekov came along, it was probably Starfleet’s best kept secret.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He said it was unprofessional.” He glares at the pool table. “Guess I can see why.”

“But-” John takes a breath to respond, but is thrust into a coughing fit that leaves him weak and reeling. Gasping for air, he falls to the floor, lungs on fire and throat running raw.

“My God, John, are you alright?” Bones rushes to him, lifting him clumsily.

Weakly, John responds, “Well, between the two of us doctors we should be able to figure it out.”

He coughs again, body spasming uncontrollably, and when he pulls his hand away it’s covered in blood. It seeps into the cuffs of his shirt and smears onto Bones’.

Bones snaps to attention. Kirk is forgotten.

“My lab. Now.”

It is near midnight when Bones finally allows John to return to his room. Bones himself remains hunched over his PADD, flicking through the results in the dark. He says it’s still processing, but John doesn’t believe him.

\---

The next morning, at John’s request, a guard takes him to Khan’s cell.

He’s dressed in red, stone-faced and unwilling to engage in any small talk John attempts to throw his way. A gun rests in the holster strapped to his waist. For a moment, John dares himself to dream, fingers twitching at his side, toying with the idea of-

“Here we are, Doctor Watson.” The guard salutes and posts himself at the end of the hall, still too close for comfort.

When John enters, Khan, now unbound, mechanically rises from his bed as if to greet him. But he says nothing, gaze flickering between John’s face and the back wall.

“…Sherlock?” John ventures when he can’t stand the silence.

Khan shakes his head.

John’s heart sinks. “But you- yesterday, you- we-“

“I know what we did yesterday,” Khan replies softly, and shivers run up John’s spine.

There’s something different about Khan today. It’s the way he seemed to shrink at the mention of his name, and the sorrow with which he denied it. It’s the way he watches John, eyes hungry and full of intent. Gone is the haughtiness, the frigid refusals, the steadfast belief that John is anything but deranged. He is beaten, shaken down, and maybe the part of him that remembered John is still there, the part that kissed him back and spoke his name is just below the surface.

“I’m sorry-“ John begins.

But Khan closes the distance between them, his lips meeting John’s, pressing against him until his back hits the glass. When Khan pulls away, they’re both panting, and John’s wrists are encased in Khan’s hands, crossed above his head.

“I- I’m sorry,” Khan blurts out, releasing him instantly as if afraid he’s hurt him, but John grabs him by his shoulders, pulling him in for another kiss. They collide with a thud against the white walls, and then Khan is tugging him to the other side of the room until his knees knock against the edge of the bed.

As they fall onto the bed, Khan beneath him, John wonders if it would have been this way in their flat, in a life without the Enterprise. It would have been night, John thinks. They would have come home from a case, veins still coursing with adrenaline, bruised and battered and absolutely exhilarated. It’s happened before. Once a stray bullet had grazed John’s shoulder and Sherlock had been held at knifepoint. When they returned to Baker Street, both unaware that they were bleeding and still flying high on their success, they ignored the clock chiming the early hour and restlessly paced the living room. John had fretted about, trying to make tea but forgetting to turn on the stove, then remembering he had neglected to fill the pot in the first place, and Sherlock had snatched up his violin bow and was swishing it through the air like a cutlass. They met in the middle, before the fireplace, and Sherlock’s bow had frozen in midair, and the detective had an expression on his face John had never seen before, and for a moment, John thought they might-

Khan moans, dragging John back to the present.

They would have worried about waking Mrs. Hudson if they were home. They would have hushed each other, stumbled from the couch to John’s room, because Sherlock’s was always a frightful mess-

“Bite me,” Khan hisses.

John threads his fingers through Khan’s dark hair, wrenching his head to the side to nip at his neck.

“Harder,” Khan urges him.

John complies, and Khan rolls his hips, making him gasp.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,” John says breathlessly. “Sherlock, I-”

Immediately, Khan tenses, and John remembers who he is.

“I don’t-” Khan pauses. “I don’t remember you. But I’m trying. Watson, you must believe me. I can feel… Sherlock. He’s there, inside me, and it’s like he- _I’m_ trying to claw out but I just can’t- but when I see you, I-”

John hangs his head. “I don’t know what to do.” His hands ball into fists, the sheets wrinkling in his grasp. “In a couple days we’ll be back on Earth. I can’t- I can’t lose you. Even when you’re like this. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“I don’t stand a chance when we get back to Earth,” Khan replies simply. Tentatively, he reaches up to stroke the side of John’s face. “But maybe…”

“What is it?” Anything. John will do anything.

“The transwarp station.” Khan edges towards the wall, lying on his side, and John settles beside him. “It brought you here, did it not? You’re a man out of his time. It can bring us back.”

“I have no idea how to operate any of this technology.”

“I do.”

“And you’ll come back to London with me? My London?”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

As if sensing John’s distress, he kisses him fiercely. “I’m trying, Watson,” he says, and when he kisses him again, John believes him. “There’s just one thing…”

“Yes?”

“My crew. There were others who were taken at the same time I was. Seventy-two of them, to be exact. We were experimented on together, trained together, and cryogenically frozen when the project came under fire. They’re aboard this ship, disguised as missiles, and when we return to Earth, I will be put to death and my family will be forever locked away in a Starfleet basement. I know this is a lot to ask of you, but if you could…”

“Yes?”

“I can give you the coordinates to direct the pods they are sealed within to a galaxy far from Earth, to a planet where they can begin their lives anew. I can’t leave unless I know they are free.”

“And this is… they’re important to you?”

“More than anything.”

“When?”

“What?”

“When?” John repeats. “When should I do this? How many people are on this ship? When does the captain sleep?”

“There are hundreds of officers on the Enterprise. There will always been someone awake and watching.”

“Then how…?”

“Once you give the order, there is no going back. They’re missiles, and will be forever out of the Enterprise’s reach. It will only take seconds.”

“And then…?”

“They won’t know what’s happened. Their confusion will buy you enough time to return and release me. All I need is one gun, and nothing will be able to stand in our way.”

“And then we’ll go home?”

“Then we will go home.”

Khan presses his forehead against John’s and whispers the coordinates that will free his crew. He says them again and again, until John has them down by heart. For a while they lie there together, John’s heart hammering in his chest.

“You should go,” Khan murmurs just as John nearly drifts off to sleep. “Before the guard comes back.”

Regretfully, John eases himself up.

“They’re being kept with the weaponry. Deck 3.” Khan remains in his bed, lips still flushed from being bitten, with his legs splayed lazily apart. “Your hair…”

John swipes it back into place and straightens his Starfleet uniform.

“Soon,” Khan promises him as he takes his leave. “This will all be over soon.”

\---

To John’s surprise, the guard who escorted him here is nowhere to be found.

He’s too antsy to simply return to his room. He chooses a direction and follows the halls, ducking behind corners when the occasional officer passes. It’s not his fault he was left unattended, and the sooner he can release Khan’s crew, the better.

He finds Deck 3 easily- the ship is, of course, arranged numerically, and there are signs to help him on his way.

When he finds that the doors are unlocked, he wants to believe it’s fate.

They swing open with the lightest touch. John can still feel Khan’s hands ghosting over his skin. He’s trembling.

He’s immediately drawn to the pods, sleek and white, the same size as human coffins. He counts them twice just to be sure. There are exactly seventy-two.

There’s a panel beside them, text flashing across its screen, glowing green. John can figure this out. He has to-

“Convenient, isn’t it, Johnny?”

The doors slam shut. Moriarty approaches him with a wide grin.

“What are you doing here?” John growls, backing towards the panel.

“The usual, the usual.” Moriarty’s red Starfleet sleeves are rolled past his elbows, and he smartly shoves his hands into his pockets. “Haven’t seen you in a while, John. Now, I wonder… what could you possibly be up to?”

“None of your business.” Although John has a feeling he knows exactly what’s going on.

“It didn’t occur to you, not once, that this was all a little too perfect?”

John collides with the panel. He gropes for it blindly, the coordinates at the tips of his fingers, until Moriarty raises his gun.

“Step away, John.”

John taps the first number.

“Johnny,” Moriarty says, the pitch of his voice rising with warning, “don’t be silly, now. Step away from the controls.”

“And if I don’t?” John enters the next number.

Moriarty fires, and the beam burns an inch-deep hole into the floor, a hair’s width from John’s foot.

John lowers his hand.

“There. That’s better, isn’t it?”

“What do you want?”

“Only to have a little chat with an old friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

Moriarty fires again, this time singeing his toes. John yelps and flinches away, the heat sinking through the leather and burning his skin, and his spine slams painfully into the panel. With a giggle, Moriarty sinks to the ground, crossing his legs, and pats the spot before him. “Come on, John. Tell me what’s got you so riled up.”

The psychopath points the gun at his heart. With a glare, he joins him on the floor, crossing his legs like a schoolboy when the gun is aimed at his feet once more.

“You sent the guard away,” John blurts out, unwilling to give Moriarty the satisfaction of labeling him as an idiot.

“And the ensigns, and the nurses, and the captain when he tried to start his usual interrogation session with your terrorist,” Moriarty sings. “Have you ever seen Jim Kirk cry? It’s a beautiful thing. He’s the poster child for daddy issues if I ever-”

“Get to your point.”

“You didn’t _really_ think Khan was going to run away with you, did you?”

“He knew my name the other day. He remembered, and he called me John.”

“But did he do that today? No? Oh, Johnny, you poor thing.”

“That doesn’t mean anything! He just- just-”

“One step forward and two steps back. He asked you to send off his crew, didn’t he? Told you he’d come back to your merry England and you’d live happily ever after?” He tries to ruffle John’s hair, but his hand is slapped away. “... _no_. John, you didn’t!” he gasps. “You slept with him, didn’t you?”

“I did no such thing.” John’s face reddens. “Now stop dancing around and say what you want to say.”

“He’s playing you,” Moriarty says flatly. “He’s the Pied-fucking-Piper and you’re following him to your grave.”

“He knows me,” John says obstinately. “He remembers-”

“He’s _lying_. Tell me, John, would the real Sherlock ever be so accommodating? So considerate, so absolutely willing? Khan would probably sleep with _me_ if he thought I would prove useful. You’ve made it obvious you’re hot for him, and he’d be damned if he didn’t take advantage of that. Whether he actually believes he was once your friend is irrelevant.”

“But- for a moment, he-”

“For a _moment_.”

John feels sick. “I don’t believe you.”

“But you’ll believe him? Have you forgotten he almost strangled you? You’d be dead and blue right now if it wasn’t for me. John, do you actually know what those ‘coordinates’ do?”

Moriarty strolls over to another panel beside a stack of oblong cases twice John’s height.

His fingers dance lightly over the keys, and with a whirring, the cases slide open, revealing the heads of torpedoes. He does it again and again, until half the room’s weapons are laid bare.

“It’s a code, you fool, not coordinates. He wanted you to wake up his entire crew so they could massacre every living soul in this tin can. If I didn’t stop you, you would have singlehandedly exterminated the Enterprise, pet navigator and chummy CMO included.”

John shakes his head. He doesn’t want to listen, doesn’t want what happened in Khan’s cell to have simply been a means to an end. But the suspicions that were sown the second he saw Khan this morning are undeniable now. Khan had been pliant, interested, practically saccharine… And now this fiasco with Khan’s crew that John had been so sickeningly quick to believe.

“He told me about Mike Stamford,” John says, repugnant at the idea that Moriarty is proving to be right all along. “But what about you? What have you got to do with it?”

“I found out about the Augment project years before I met the two of you. When I saw Sherlock, I knew he’d be perfect. He was exactly what they were looking for. Played with him a bit first, as you know, but when I finally traded him in I had enough to buy seven armies, a fleet of warships, a Legolas look-alike, and a basket of Bengal kittens just for kicks.”

“You- you sold them Sherlock?”

“I was weak. Money was calling. And he was getting boring.”

“What did they do to him?” John demands. “Why doesn’t he know who I am? Has he been brainwashed?”

“Brainwashing would imply that there’s still something of Sherlock floating around in there. That there’s _hope_ , as you clearly have succumbed to believing. I do find naivety cute, but I have to tell you- after Sherlock put himself in such a catatonic state, it wasn’t hard to mold that beautiful mind into something more sinister.”

“You wouldn’t do that!” John insists. “You wouldn’t destroy your opponent like that, you’d keep him alive and torture him mercilessly.”

“Oh, John,” Moriarty drawls, looking upon him with pity. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Numbly, John stutters, “You- you can’t mean-”

“You’re my new favorite, John Watson,” Moriarty announces with delight, as if John’s won the lottery. “It’s all worked out so well. Why be king of the world when I can conquer the universe? Sherlock was boring, 21st century Earth was boring- so I froze myself and waited for the new age. Khan belongs to me, as does his crew, and when the time is right we’ll take the Enterprise and head out for the stars. I admit you were an afterthought, but I do enjoy watching hamsters run on wheels.”

“You zapped me here?”

“Who else?”

In the split second that Moriarty lowers his gun, John punches him. There’s a satisfying crack, and blood spurts in rivulets down Moriarty’s nose. Moriarty wipes his nose on his sleeve, the stains blackening the red fabric, and laughs.

“Glad I could help you get that out of your system. Now up, up, before Montgomery Scott comes in for his lunchtime inspection.”

Moriarty marches John back to his room at gunpoint.

“I’ll tell Kirk,” John snarls as Moriarty slides the glass door shut. “I’ll tell-” John suddenly doubles over, body wracked with another coughing fit. Drops of blood splatter across his hand, onto his bed, and through watery eyes he can discern Moriarty leering at him through the glass.

“Are you alright, Doctor Watson?” Moriarty asks sweetly.

Footsteps echo through the hallway. Moriarty tucks his gun back into his holster, shoves his hands into his pockets, and struts away whistling.


	5. Schiller 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait.
> 
> E was recently hospitalized. J was having college crises. 
> 
> Extra long chapter for you today, and don't forget to check out our Tumblr (sweetntwenty) for more Starlock content!

“Left-”

“I got it-”

_“Left-”_

“I said I got it-”

“But you’re still on the same-”

“It’s _fine_ -”

“Hikaru-!”

Sulu swears. The Enterprise jolts, narrowly avoiding an asteroid collision; nearly every crewmember packed onto the platform behind the captain’s chair is knocked off their feet. John can only imagine the chaos that’s being caused on the decks below.

Chekov’s not one to crow an “I-told-you-so,” but the way he bites his lip and raises his eyebrows is enough.

Jaw set, refusing to grant his audience any satisfaction, Sulu looks straight ahead and swallows another curse.

“Anozher! Starboard-”

“Got it-”

“And anozher! Elevate by twenty-seven degrees-”

“Twenty- _eight_ -

“Starboard again-”

“Chekov!” Sulu snaps.

Scotty cackles and throws his arms around John and Bones. John’s still clinging to the railing that he’d been thrown against and refuses to let go. “When was the last time things got this shaken up? What’s this, a Schiller 40?”

“35, actually,” Bones replies, crossing his arms. Like the twenty or thirty other Enterprise officers who have gathered here, his attention is fixated on their helmsman and the windscreen.

“Nothing to worry about, Watson!” Scotty claps John on the back jovially. “For Sulu, it’s a walk in the park.”

“You’ve done this before?” John asks.

“Asteroid fields? All the time!”

“I don’t know what you’re so excited about.” Bones shakes Scotty’s arm off. “Aren’t you worried he’ll ding up the closest thing you have to a child?”

“We’ve got two brilliant minds at the wheel. Nothing can go wrong.”

Scotty’s fearlessness is not unfounded. Sulu pilots the Enterprise like threading a needle, making what John used to imagine was a clanking, lumbering metal giant into a being as nimble as a sparrow.  

“Hikaru-”

Sulu slaps Chekov’s hand away from the controls. “Captain!”

“ _Mo-om_!” Scotty mimics. Bones cuffs him on the shoulder.  

“Settle down,” Kirk orders no one in particular.

“I’m just doing my job-” Chekov begins.

“If your job is to hinder me from doing mine- Captain!”

“Chekov,” Kirk warns again, and the navigator reluctantly slumps back in his seat.

“Dangerous, though, isn’t it?” John says, eyeing a particularly nasty chunk of space rubble that Sulu nearly skims. “Was there really no way around this?”

“Oh, there was a way. Plenty of ways. But Kirk’s in a hurry get home. He had Chekov map out the absolute quickest path back to Earth-”

“-and decided dancing through an asteroid field was worth the risk. Idiot,” Bones finishes.

“How quick is this going to be?” John asks. “When will we get there?”

Scotty shrugs. “Chekov said tomorrow. In thirty-six hours, to be exact, if this bit goes smoothly.”

“And why wouldn’t it?” Bones exclaims, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I mean, we’re only _this close_ to busting a hole in our ship and killing everyone on board. How much time is he saving in the end? Another twenty-four hours? Forty-eight, tops? And just look at all of you! Ran in here the second Jim announced the asteroids on the comm, like it’s supersized Galaga. Or a hanging. Did you know they did that, back in medieval times? People would literally gather in the town square around the gallows and watch some poor bastard get executed.”

“You’re here, too,” John reminds him. “You _brought_ me here.”

“Someone has to be the voice of reason when our captain’s being a complete _ass_.” Bones spits the last word out, but if Kirk heard him, he makes no sign of it. “And you’ve been cooped up in that room for too long. I felt sorry for you.”

“‘e wants to put all this Khan business behind him,” Scotty adds. “Can’t say I blame him.”

“Don’t we all. John, you alright?”

John’s queasy again, leaning with his forehead against the railing, but the cool metal does little to allay his feverish skin. He isn’t sure if it’s just his undefined illness making a reappearance, or simply the fact that the clock is ticking anew, and in less than two days Sherlock will be completely out of his reach. Then there’s the run-in he had with Moriarty last night. Should he tell Kirk about the seventy-two Augments in his cargo hold, packaged in their missiles? Surely, as captain of the ship, Kirk would know. Had he captured them himself, shoved them into some kind of stasis? He doesn’t seem like the sort, and John’s heard plenty of gossip and contention over how to deal with Khan. There must be more going on here, then, more than he’s been told, and maybe more than he can understand.

The fear of any punishment Moriarty might deal is what ultimately keeps John silent. An ambiguous threat is nevertheless a threat, and the last thing John wants to do is put Sherlock in harm’s way.

“Maybe ‘e’s spacesick,” Scotty’s saying. “Watson, if you’re going to vomit, aim for that little spot behind Jim’s chair that Spock’s so fond of.”

Bones is by his side immediately. “We’ll be out of the woods soon. Wanna take a walk?”

“No, no. Just- all this shaking and tossing about. It’ll pass.”

“Yeah. That must be it.”

But John is old enough to know a lie when he hears one.

Scotty’s grumbling about their delayed dinner when the Enterprise swerves, and the looming asteroids, some so large they block the entire windscreen, begin to play on John’s nerves. Kirk remains in his command chair, absolutely still, hands curled loosely over the ends of the armrests, oblivious to the crowd of officers muttering hotly behind him.

The Enterprise suddenly dives, and John decides to take the suggested walk on his own. As much on his own as he can be, with a guard trailing a good twenty paces behind him.

Indistinct announcements blare over the speakers. From what he can discern, Kirk isn’t very good at apologizing.

\---

When Sulu enters the mess, every officer erupts into applause. John is compelled to join in.

Jumping to his feet, Scotty snaps to a salute. “Sir! The valor that characterized tonight’s impromptu flight will forever live in-”

“Scotty, please,” Sulu sighs, taking his seat.

Scotty grins. “If there’s anyone I would trust to fly this ship for the next five years, I suppose it would be you.” He presents Sulu with a giant baked potato, split in half and carved into like a crater, so full of gravy that it’s spilling out onto the plate. For good measure, he plops a dinner roll and a slab of bacon beside it. “Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.”

Sulu accepts the food uncertainly.

“What?”

“...what is it?”

“Mount Pinatubo!” Scotty exclaims in exasperation, looking around the table for affirmations and finding none. “It’s our third stop. Planet topped off with a live volcano with a lake in the middle. We won’t send Spock again, of course, but we’ll manage. Am I the only one who looked at the itinerary?”

Sulu remains unconvinced.

“I didn’t do anything to it,” Scotty crosses his arms. “Held up the line at the replicator putting this together. And what thanks do I get? Just my luck, I’m stuck for five years in a flying tin can with a lousy-”

Sulu hugs him tightly. “Shut up. Thank you. And shut up.”

“Five years?” John asks.

“We’re heading out for a five-year mission, stowaway,” Scotty replies. “Aliens! Foreign planets! Tentacle monsters and sex pollen! It’s going to be wild.”

“It’s going to be excruciating. Five years in space with you hooligans? You alone are the reason for half my gray hairs,” Bones says without any real malice. He slides a tray to John, fresh from the replicator.

The smell makes his stomach turn. He tries to smile.

“We’re all going to be ancient when we get back,” Bones grumbles.

“All of us except…” Scotty’s eyes light up when he spots Chekov, who’s slinking into the mess with his head bowed. “Pavel!” Scotty shouts, making the Ensign jump.

“Quit teasing him.” A woman in red joins them, all angles and fierceness, hair pulled back, not a line out of place- Uhura, right?- and plants herself directly across from Scotty.

“I’m not doing him any permanent harm,” Scotty replies easily, and is the only one at the table who is seemingly impervious to her glares. “And should I take this to mean we’re speaking again?”

“Don’t pretend you’re the victim here,” she replies harshly, stabbing into her salad with a vengeance.

“I don’t have a malicious bone in my body.”

“You have been-” She stops suddenly, composing herself. “This is a sensitive situation for me, Scotty. And you’re really not helping.”

“I don’t understand. Spock was insufferable, wasn’t he? A year’s a long time. We all admire you for sticking it out for as long as you did. Even Sulu here-”

“Don’t include me,” Sulu cuts in bluntly.

“I didn’t-” She glances around surreptitiously, and once satisfied no one’s listening, continues tremulously, “ _he_ left _me_.”

Mouth agape, Scotty stutters, “Uhura, I-”

“Is this seat taken, Doctor Watson?” Chekov asks, having finally succumbed, either out of habit or obligation, to heeding Scotty’s beckonings.

“You should eat something,” Sulu says sternly when he notices Chekov’s empty-handed.

Frowning, nose twitching in mortification, Chekov slides onto the bench beside John. “I am not hungry.”

“You need three meals a day or you get jittery. Don’t lie.”

“If I say I am not hungry zhen I am not hungry, and zat is zat.”

Calmly, with a deliberate grace, Sulu places his fork down on the table. “Is this about the asteroids?”

“Go on, kid,” Bones says gruffly when Chekov refuses to reply. “Get it over with. I don’t want this carrying on into next week.”

Chekov chooses his words carefully. “I do not appreciate being trivialized in my own field of expertise.”

“Oh, _daarin_ ,” Scotty exclaims. “No one ever doubted you.”

“He _just_ asked you not to trivialize him,” Uhura points out.

“I’m not!”

“I saved us twice,” Chekov continues, even as he fidgets under Sulu’s shrewdness. “Twice! Zhey would not have killed anyone, but damage would have been dealt to zhis ship, and we would have had to waste time wizh repairs razher zhan leaving immediately for our expedition.”

For a moment, despite being confronted with hard evidence, John believes Sulu will simply tear Chekov down completely.

“I’m sorry. You’re right.” Sulu says, the apology astonishing John even more than his display of graciousness towards Scotty.

“Don’t let him off completely. All that twittering in your ear could have spelled disaster,” Bones says, making Chekov burn again with embarrassment.

“It’s fine.” Sulu picks up his fork.

“But-”

“I said it’s fine.” He takes a healthy bite out of his volcano.

Bones snorts. “Someone’s in a good mood.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Do I constantly come off as miserable?”

“Yes,” the table intones in unison.

“I’m just glad to finally be going on shore leave.”

“Who’s waiting for you on shore leave?” John asks, beating Scotty to the punch.

As is expected, Sulu’s uncharacteristically high spirits don’t extend to John.

Scotty’s delighted anyway. “Got you there, didn’t ‘e?”

“There’s no one.” Sulu pointedly addresses everyone but John.

“Bullshit,” John says immediately.

Sulu’s fork pauses in mid air. “Excuse me?”

“It’s bullshit,” John repeats. “Someone’s waiting for you, someone very dear to you, and today you’re peppier than normal because being sidetracked by Khan has finally come to an end.”

Bones kicks him under the table. He stands his ground, taking Sulu’s venom head on, even as he remembers that everyone at this table but himself is armed.

“That’s nothing I wouldn’t say. Tamer, in fact,” Scotty swoops in. “On a somewhat related note, what are your plans, Watson?”

“Plans?”

“Tomorrow. And after. If you’re going to gate-crash another ship, I recommend the Adelphi. They’ve got an Olympic-sized swimming pool and drill their officers through null-gravity laser tag-”

“I’m not sneaking onto another ship,” John interrupts him firmly. He ignores Sulu’s open glower.

“Good! So you’re free.”

“I didn’t say-”

“You should come along with us.”

All eyes, which had been trained on John and Sulu’s staring contest, flick to Scotty.

“What? I can’t be the only one who thought of that.”

“I-” John looks around the table uncertainly. “I don’t-”

“Come on! It’ll be great. Five years in space! Aliens! Foreign planets! Tentacle monsters and-”

“Sex pollen. Yes, I heard.”

“So?”

“Absolutely not,” Sulu cuts in.

“A fine order, sir, if you were the Captain,” Scotty replies.

“He won’t stand for it,” Sulu insists.

“He’ll give in if Bones asks. It’s a tried-and-tested, foolproof operation. Take Yeoman Rand. Sweet girl, but she was never actually _qualified_ to be on this ship. She’s the daughter of a family friend I owed a favor. Over the last two years, me and Bones have upgraded the rec rooms, hired those chefs that make curry every other week, updated our weapons policies- there’s a reason we no longer carry those C77X missiles. They cause stoppage in the barrels and would have started a fire across three decks. You’re all welcome, by the way. And how do you think you lot- yes, just _us_ \- got those shower privileges? Real showers, not that sonic sorcery. At least at that outpost I was marooned on I could melt down snow and have a proper bath. Bones butters Jim up and I wheedle him down. It’s flawless.”

“It’s corruption.” Uhura’s appalled. “Only _one_ of those things wasn’t an abuse of influence.”

“Nonsense,” Scotty says airily. “I have proven to be far more productive when my left ear isn’t clogged up with whatever the sonic missed. Now, Watson, let’s say the paperwork’s all squared away and Jim gives you his blessing. You can now legally embark on the greatest adventure of your life, with the added perk of basking daily in the charming presence of yours truly. Dream come true, isn’t it?”

“What would I do? I’m two hundred years behind all of you. I don’t know any of this technology,” John says.

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you? People bleed the same in every century. You can be Bones’ assistant.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Sulu exclaims. “This is a joke, right? You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious,” Scotty says.

“...I would be glad if you stayed, Doctor Watson,” Chekov mumbles.  

Pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration, Sulu shoves his plate away.

They’re all watching John intently, even Uhura, and although the thought of spending his days somewhere other than London never crossed his mind, there’s something about the way Chekov’s watching him with big, hopeful eyes, and even Bones has snapped out of his moodiness enough to cast equally hopeful sidelong glances, and for some reason Scotty is welcoming him with open arms-

He finds himself nodding for the show of it, and maybe it’s because under different circumstances, it _does_ sound like the thrill of a lifetime. “Don’t know how you could get that past Kirk, but that would be fantastic.”

Sulu slams his glass on the table with more force than necessary. Uhura, to John’s surprise, seems more concerned with his wrath than the possibility of a stowaway tagging along.

“Pavel,” Scotty says suddenly, as Sulu departs with a huff, “Isn’t that your Wieniawska?” He nods towards a female officer a few tables away,

This elicits protestations from Uhura, but he holds up a finger for silence. “She’s alone. Now or never, right?”

“But-” Chekov starts.

“Go.”

“I cannot just-”

“Yes, you can. Because tomorrow she’s transferring and you’ll spend the next five years tugging around your what-if’s. Just talk to the lady. You’ll be glad you did.” Scotty sends him off with a bumbling sign of the cross.

“You know she’s married, right?” Uhura says, especially vicious from being interrupted.

Scotty blinks.

“Oh, Jesus,” Bones mutters.  

“She took off for a few weeks last May for her honeymoon, remember? Her husband is based at Starfleet in Buenos Aires.”

Chekov is already there, blushing and timid, his words tiptoeing around Christine Wieniawska’s socially mandated smile.

Scotty buries his head in his arms. A muffled “shit” is heard.

A horrid cough escapes John. Scotty lifts his head and latches on.

“Let’s get out of here, Watson.” Before Chekov returns. “You’ve been looking a bit peaky. I’ve got something to cheer you right up.”

“What’s this? You’re afraid of an Ensign?” Bones snorts. Uhura shoots him a dirty look.

“Hustle, hustle!” Scotty tugs John out of the mess, who gives Uhura an awkward half-wave goodbye.

“I passed through Aberdeen once. Started on the northern edge with my mates and made my way down to Edinburgh,” John says. “That’s where you’re from, right? Aberdeen?”

Scotty punches a button on an elevator. “Nice little hill, isn’t it? Everything by the sea.” Distractedly, he runs his hand through his thinning hair.

“So you _are_ afraid of Chekov.”

“Afraid?” The engineer laughs. “Of Pavel? No, Watson. I just feel like an ass and can’t stand the thought of looking the kid in the eye. Here it is.” The elevator doors slide open. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together lately. He’s like a younger, less handsome, arguably less intelligent version of me. I don’t mean to crush him.”

“Where are we going?” John asks as the elevator plunges down.

“The Occipital Lobe,” Scotty replies mysteriously. “And, conveniently, the one place he’ll never find me.”

It’s a surveillance room, and its four walls are lined with screens that flick through shots of what seems like every room on the ship. There’s three alternating angles of the mess, and John can pick out the little slip of gold that is Chekov, returning to the table in premature defeat. One screen is solely devoted to Khan, who’s sitting on his bed with his knees pulled up to his chest.

John takes a quick inventory of the cell. Fortunately, Moriarty is nowhere to be found. Perhaps keeping the seventy-two missiles to himself was the right choice.

“Julian!” Scotty barks at the officer in red drifting off to sleep on a swivel chair. “Good morning, Admiral,” he says sweetly when the young man snaps to attention.

“Oh, it’s just you.” The Yeoman relaxes with a grin. “I was afraid you were Lieutenant Uhura. She actually reported me for napping last week, can you believe it? Anyway, what can I do for you, Mr. Montgomery? And Mr…?” His eyes widen suddenly upon noticing John. “Hey, aren’t you-”

“John Watson, newest crewmember aboard the Enterprise. Get it together, man,” Scotty interjects smoothly.

“Really? Didn’t he warp aboard without-”

“Julian,” Scotty says testily, “what did I tell you about asking too many questions?”

“But he’s-”

“With me. And who am I, Julian?”

“...Chief Engineer,” Julian replies begrudgingly.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you can spy on everyone through the surveillance room, apparently.”

“That’s correct. Watson, give the boy a gold star.”

John fishes out lint from his pocket.

“Put a raincheck on it, Admiral. Now if you don’t mind…?”

Julian sighs theatrically and retires to the back of the room, snoring softly moments later.

“We have a system,” Scotty says with a wink. “Once a week I let him use my real shower. In exchange I can come here to blow off some steam. Boiler rooms and formulas can whittle a man’s spirit down, Watson. Sometimes it’s good to kick back and indulge in a little mindless TV.” He settles into Julian’s chair and gestures at John to take the one beside him.

“This seems, I don’t know- illegal?” John says, though he admits to himself that being a rather omniscient eye is quite thrilling.

“The cameras are all blasting from public areas. But I’d give up my shower privileges for a year if I could get footage of just one night between Spock and Uhura. I’m still convinced it didn’t really happen, you know?”

“Hey, isn’t that…?” John points at a screen to Scotty’s left, trained on the hall just past the mess.

Scotty’s fingers glide swiftly across the keyboard, locking the view and zooming in. He whistles. “Speak of the devil. And Jim too! It’s a bonus round.”

\---

“-tain, although the matter of the asteroid field has been concluded, and thankfully without injury, I feel that as your First Officer I must voice my concerns for your reckless decision to change our ship’s course. You neglected to come to me before putting this order into effect, and I do not believe it was due to forgetfulness.”

“You’re offended,” Kirk replies simply.

“I admit this situation has caused me to question whether you possess any respect for my position, as both an officer and your… partner.”

“Oh, Spock-” Kirk sighs.

Spock raises his hand for silence. “You are attempting to placate me with displays of affection that will purposefully circumvent the issue of your willful negligence to consult me. If you had approached me with your desire to minimize the distance between us and Earth, I would have informed you that the odds of bringing harm to the Enterprise and its crew were 12.7%. Objectively, the day of travel we regained does not equate the level of risk we undertook.”

“We made it. No one got hurt. Is this conversation really necessary?”

“It _is_ , Captain. This display of a lack of caution in favor of succuming to emotional compromisation is a dangerous habit that you cannot take with you when we depart for our five-year mission. For five years, you will have 427 lives in your hands. You cannot afford to behave this way again.”

John waits for Kirk to argue, to storm away, perhaps petulantly inform Spock that if he is so concerned with the way Kirk runs his ship, he is free to stay behind when they begin their expedition- but Kirk only slumps against the curved walls, head bowed.

“You’re right,” Kirk says. “It was stupid. Even Chekov tried to tell me so. But I shouted him down.”

“As you said, all is well.” Spock is oddly satisfied. If it had been anyone but Kirk, they wouldn’t have been let off so easy. “My intention here was not to shame you, but to bring to light the consequences you could have incurred.”

“I just want to put all of this behind me as soon as possible. Pike, that superhuman bastard, the ‘missiles’ burning up our cargo hold. And _Watson_ , whoever the hell he is. It’s too much, Spock. I didn’t sign up for this. I am _this_ close to breaking and every day I’m afraid I’ll slip, that someone will see what a wreck I’ve been.”

“It is fortunate, then, that I am here.”

“So I’m forgiven?”

“As your subordinate, it is not my place to pardon you.”

“Spock.”

The Vulcan’s mouth twitches into a half-smile. “...yes. You are forgiven.”

Kirk beams. “So what were you up to last night? What in the ‘verse was more important than spending it with me?”

“I was researching our guests.”

“Khan?”

“Doctor Watson. And Sherlock Holmes.”

“And?”

“Of Doctor Watson, there is not much to say. Sherlock Holmes, however… it is rather curious.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“You are aware of my human ancestry?”

“Who isn’t?”

“It appears that Sherlock Holmes did exist, approximately two hundred years ago, as Doctor Watson claims. And I am one of his descendants.”

“Excuse me?!”

“There is a great dearth of records pertaining to Sherlock Holmes. English civilian records are normally very thorough. It was suspicious enough that I believe the information was tampered with.”

“Then how’d you manage it?”

“I discovered him through his older brother, Mycroft Holmes, a distinguished member of Parliament in that time. If the older was not so public a figure I doubt I would have been able to locate the younger at all.”

“And he’s your great-great-great-grandfather.”

“Something of the kind. All I could ascertain of his life was that he married a woman named Irene Adler, a con artist and extortionist wanted in seventeen countries.”

“Jesus, Spock. Do you think Watson knows? Maybe that’s why he’s here. To get to you.”

“Even if he knows of my ancestry, I cannot understand what business he could have with me.”

“We’ll have to keep an eye on him again.”

“To be frank, Captain, I do not believe Doctor Watson is a threat to us.”

“He warped onto the _Enterprise_. Time travel bullshit or not, Scotty’s formulas were confiscated by Starfleet right after Narada. That makes Watson either a genius or a very talented burglar.”

“I remain dubious, Captain. It is very clear to me, as well as various members of the crew whom have interacted with Watson and whom I have questioned, that he is completely unfamiliar with our technology and the current state of the universe. Doctor McCoy has expressed his complete trust, and perhaps even fondness for our guest.”

“I’ve never known Bones to immediately like anyone. Except myself, maybe, but even then it took me a bit to wear him down.”

“You see my point.”

“What do we do when we dock, then? He’s done nothing, except warp aboard without hailing us, and as much as I don’t like him, I’m not going to throw him in jail for that.”

“Set him free, then. San Francisco is not the middle of nowhere. He will manage.” At Kirk’s hesitation, Spock continues, “Unless you do believe he has been forced to travel through time, and feel guilty for abandoning someone you consider to be helpless.”

“Isn’t guilt a human thing?”

“I have felt what you might call guilt only once in my life, but the absence of incidence is not to do with my race. Making the most logical decision, is, by definition, the right one, and such actions do not beget regrets. However, my lack of personal experience does not mean I cannot identify it within you.”

Kirk’s lips twist reluctantly into a wistful smile. He steps closer to Spock, tugging their still entwined fingers, drawing him in. “Always so eloquent…” He leans in to kiss him, and Spock closes his eyes, waiting- but the door to the mess slides open, and he immediately creates a professional distance between them.

“Bones!” Kirk exclaims jovially.

“Forgive me, Captain, but I have a few matters to attend to.” Spock salutes and takes his leave.

“What’s up?” Kirk asks Bones, still fixated on Spock. It’s with great effort that he turns his eyes to his CMO. “How are you? We haven’t hung out in a while.”

“Thanks for noticing,” Bones replies dryly. Kirk laughs and doesn’t sense the sting. “And I’m alright, other than spending all afternoon vomiting my guts out since you decided Sulu needed to practice his acrobatics.”

“Geez, I’m sorry, Bones.”

“No, you’re not. Tell me, was it worth it, tossing us around just to shave off a few hours?”

“God, not you too.”

“For your sake, I hope the rest of the crew gave you a hard time.”

“If they’re unhappy-”

“They are.”

“They’re keeping it to themselves. Except Spock, but I expected that.”

“...you and Spock, huh?”

“Does everyone know?”

“Scotty knows. So yes, everyone knows.”

“Even Uhura?”

“Especially her.”

“Jesus.”

“She’s not out to kill you, kid. I think she saw it coming for a long time.”

“To be honest, I kinda did too.” Kirk grins sheepishly. “Did you really come here for gossip?”

“No. I wanted to talk to you about Watson.”

“Bones-”

“Hear me out. You’re not looking to dump him along with Khan, are you? Because he hasn’t done anything wrong and if you lock him up just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time- God, Jim, did you know his best friend just committed suicide? Probably more than a best friend, but details are beside the point. He’d die for him. He’s under a tremendous amount of stress, so of course he’s going to latch onto the first thing that even vaguely resembles the guy, and it’s his shit luck that it’s Khan-”

“Bones!” Kirk shouts over him. “I’m not sending him to jail.”

“Good. So you’ll sign him on to the Enterprise.”

“What?”

“Watson’s a doctor. I need an assistant.”

“You’ve already got Chapel!”

“Fives years in space, Jim. You’re going to end up on my table a thousand times before we’re Earthside again. I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

“But do you need it from _him_?”

“Jim.”

“You realize we don’t know shit about this guy, right?”

“You knew Scotty for all of five minutes before making him your Chief Engineer.”

“That’s not exactly how it went.”

“Close enough.”

“We _just_ met him-”

“ _Jim_.”

“Fine! I’ll think about it, alright?”

“Sure you will.”

“I _will_.”

“Thanks.”

“....why do you care so much?”

“He’s a decent guy.”

“Really, Bones.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“It just doesn’t add up. That’s all.”

“It’s not often that I meet someone who doesn’t immediately drive me up a wall. He’s decent, alright? And he isn’t an idiot.”

“Is that it?”

“...it’s a bit more delicate than that,” Bones says softly.

“Tell me.”

Bones shakes his head.

“...Bones? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t seem like it the past few days. Have you been avoiding me?”

“Jim, not now.”

“So you are!”

“Jim,” Bones says warningly.

“Is this about Watson?”

“No.”

“Then what happened?”

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

“Is it something I did?”

Bones crosses his arms.

“What the hell, Bones. What did I do?”

Completely astounded, Bones opens his mouth, shuts it, and growls angrily, “You really are something, kid.”

“Bones!”

“Unbelievable.”

“Bones-”

Bones’s step recede down the hallway. Kirk’s alone now, standing uncertainly with his fists at his sides. There’s the light of comprehension, just for a second, but he shakes it away.

\---

“Scotty I expected, but John? Seriously?”

John swivels on his chair with his hands raised as Bones storms his way in. “He coerced me.”

“I take it back, Watson. If you’re so eager to sell out maybe you don’t belong on the Enterprise after all,” Scotty quips goodnaturedly.

“How’d you know we were here?” John asks.

“Camera in that hallway was acting funny. It was obvious someone was zooming in.”

“...let’s talk about the elephant in the room, shall we?” Scotty says when the three men lapse into an awkward silence, save for Julian’s snores in the background. “How long have you been sleeping with Kirk? And more importantly, how the hell did you hide it from me for so long?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Out with it, McCoy. You were weirdly concerned about Spock and Uhura splitting. It’s all starting to come together.”

“Scotty, leave him alone, he’s clearly-” John begins.

“It happened,” Bones cuts in coldly. “And now it’s over. The. Fucking. End. Let’s go, John.”

“That’s not fair, you hang out with him every day!” Scotty whines as Bones frogmarches John away. “Are you mad, McCoy? I won’t tell anyone, I promise!”

“I couldn’t care less.” Bones slams the door behind them.

\---

John’s never visited the observation deck before. Standing in front of the vast window, he’s confronted with the deep, black void of space. It stares back at him, overwhelming him far more than the little aperture in his cell ever could. It is undeniable, incomprehensible. He’s perched at the end of a pier, ready to dive into an infinite ocean. But where to?

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Bones leans on the glass with both hands. “You come out here, and you realize how forgettable everything is. We’re all just floating specks of dust.”

John nods slowly, but privately disagrees. If anything, standing over the universe is empowering. He’s one of the few living beings for light years, and it makes him feel invincible. He and the Enterprise are conquering the unknown.

“You and Scotty- you heard everything?” Bones asks.

“Yeah. Sorry,” John adds quickly, “I didn’t mean to-”

“Nah, I’m not mad. Guess it makes things easier, I was going to tell you anyway.” Bones pauses, then adds, “I never should’ve let that kid get under my skin.”

“Seems understandable, from what I’ve heard. You’ve known each other for so long. Lived with each other all that time.”

“It was awful timing when I met him, though. Did I ever tell you how I joined Starfleet?”

John shakes his head.

“I just got out of a nasty divorce. She took everything- the house, my daughter. My friends. And after that, what could possibly be left? I got out of Georgia and went north to Iowa, where Starfleet was recruiting. And that was where I met him. Sometimes I think- I worry- was he just a rebound? A _four-year-long_ rebound? How pathetic does that make me?”

“You’re friends, aren’t you? You did things together other than- you know-?”

“Fuck?” Bones tries to suppress his laughter, perhaps for the sake of the solemnity of the matter, but can’t help but betray himself with a chuckle. “Yes. We did just about everything together. I think most of my Academy life was spent dragging his drunk ass home, saving him from all the brawls he’d get into at the wharves, shooing away his one-night stands who didn’t know how to take a hint. Don’t laugh- it’s primitive, but there wasn’t much you could get up to, with the way Starfleet kept us busy. And Jim, he’d decided he wanted to graduate in three years instead of four. So of course that meant _I_ was graduating in three years with him.

“It bothered me. All those people- humans and aliens, even- parading in and out of his room. Jim certainly isn’t picky. He’s practically a mascot for anti-discrimination. It was right before Christmas the first time we fooled around. We were drunk- maybe that was a clue, because the very next night he was dating Gaila. She was an Orion girl, Uhura’s roommate. Never could escape these assholes. Then after Gaila was Pram, then Nikolai, and Tamille, and on and on- and sometimes there was me. I never could figure us out. What do you become when you sleep with your best friend?”

“I wouldn’t know,” John replies, because he’s been wondering the same.

“Please forgive Jim,” Bones says, “for the awful way he’s treated you. I know he’s ashamed because he avoids talking about you with me. He’s not usually like this. Ever since Khan killed Pike, I could hardly recognize him.”

“Pike?” John’s heard the name before.

“He was an Admiral, and closest thing Jim’s had to a father. He got Jim to join the ‘Fleet. Jim’s real father was George Kirk, First Officer of the Kelvin who died in battle for his crew the day Jim was born. Dumb kid was going nowhere fast, and having a shitty stepdad didn’t help. If it wasn’t for Pike, Jim would probably be pumping gas in Iowa right now, rotting with an STD.”

“I see.”

“Jim’s a good guy. Even I can’t stay angry at him for long.”

“It’s Spock I’ve never liked. And I think the feeling was mutual.”

“You’re not alone. But don’t- don’t hate him either, Watson. I can’t even, though I try. It’s like Jim said- we all saw it coming. It was inevitable, them being together. He’d take a bullet for Jim. I know, I’ve had to dig them out before. It all started a year and a half ago with the Narada incident and-” Bones stops abruptly. “We’ve all been through a lot lately, Spock most of all. You’ll probably never hear this from him, but… he’s one of the last of his kind. During Narada, Vulcan was destroyed. The entire fucking planet. And now all that’s left is just a handful of his people trying to colonize a new world, and him the half-breed. Half human. See, that’s why I don’t believe it when he tries to convince us he doesn’t feel. I’ve got plenty of theories on the Vulcan race, but a half-Vulcan? A half _human_ one at that? You can’t deny emotion when you’re a creature made of it. It’s pent up inside him, all that rage. The loneliness. It makes him harsh. But five years in space, watching the two of them together? I’m not looking forward to that. All the sympathy in the world won’t make it any easier.”

John is silent- what could he possibly say about genocide?

Out of nowhere, a huge satellite comes into view.

“Jesus!” John jumps back quickly, but Bones merely smiles fondly.

“Isn’t she pretty?”

Over a thousand times the size of the Enterprise, a monstrous space station looms only a few hundred yards away. DNA-like in structure, spirals surround a long tower in the center. But upon closer inspection, John sees broken windows and fallen sections of the spiral; the structure has obviously fallen out of use.

“What was she?”

“An early satellite designed to hold over 10,000 people. Put out here even before we made contact with the Vulcans. Well-populated for awhile, but it became extremely impractical to live on, so everyone left.”

“Why is it still out here?”

“Too big to take home. Now it’s just a reminder of the old days.”

“‘Old days?’ I’m seeing my future.”

“Your future?”

“They just released advertisements about this on the news. Right before I left. Some uni kid in Liverpool designed this in a class, and the UK Space Agency bought the plans. Everyone said then how marvelous it’d be, an international sensation. Guess I’ll have to go back and tell them it won’t work out, eh?”

John grins at his joke and looks at Bones for a reaction, but the doctor’s face falls.

“Bones, what’s the matter?”

“Your test results. I wanted to tell you without all the others listening in.”

“Don’t,” John begins walking away. “I’ve seen that look before, I’ve _worn_ that look before.”

“Watson!” Bones calls after him, but John is nearly at the door. As his hand reaches the jamb, he hears, “John! Function loss is inevitable, but I can try-”

“I said, _don’t_!”

He’s never raised his voice to Bones. He doesn’t like the feeling, or the way the CMO is looking at him with an expression of resignation and sadness.

“I meant it when I told Jim I want you for my assistant,” Bones says quietly. “We’ve got equipment here. And medicine. And a bridge crew that wouldn’t mind adding you to the family. Think about it, alright?”

“...Bones?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you give me a minute alone? I’ll follow you over. Just a minute.”

“Sure.”

John closes the door behind him and catches one last glimpse through the great window of the huge satellite, now disappearing into the distance.

His head spins, vision blurring. Dropping to his knees, he wills himself not to pass out. He’s a fucking soldier, not an invalid-

But he can’t help it, can’t get a grip on himself. It’s too much, too fast- Spock, half human, somehow descended from Sherlock and Irene. What happened to John? Why aren’t they written together in history? Is this all for nothing? He can’t imagine what could possibly come between them when they get home, what would make Sherlock return to her.

 _When_? Is it a _when_ now? Are there even odds in his favor, with Bones and his damned medical tests that hide nothing and this fucking cough that won’t quit-

_“… I proved to you once before that your injuries were psychosomatic, didn’t I?” Sherlock circled the couch, John clutching his elbow and maneuvering furniture between himself and the scarf in Sherlock’s hand. “Look, Nepalese shamans use this method all the time to relieve severe pain, they know it’s all in the mind. All I have to do is wrap this around your elbow, tighten and pull-”_

_“For Chrissakes, Sherlock, you’re not getting anywhere near my arm! It’s already your fault, when we twisted out of those handcuffs you sprained the damn thing-” John’s complaint was cut short when he bumped into a lamp and had to reexamine his path away from Sherlock. But when he looked up, Sherlock had stopped moving, the scarf dangling from his loose fingers._

_“I’ve caused you a lot of physical pain, haven’t I? In all of our cases…” It was as though Sherlock had never stopped to think about it before. “And you’ve nearly died, too-”_

_“But I haven’t, Sherlock.”_

_“Not yet.” The cold, emotionless expression returned to his face. “At this rate, though it’s only a matter of time before I inadvertently kill you… You didn’t sign up for this.” And he marched out of the flat, dropping the scarf and slamming the door behind him._

John had wanted to tell Bones about the Augments in the cargo hold. Seventy-two souls, wrapped up in missile casings. Are they all like Khan, just human beings spirited away from home? But the moment is gone, and John isn’t sure what Bones could have possibly done.

\---

John doesn’t sleep that night.

He shuffles Chekov’s pillows and kicks his blankets aside. The star-shaped tin, forgotten at the foot of his bed, falls clanking to the floor. It’s freezing against his bare feet. The shock makes him shudder; seconds earlier he had been boiling.

His black jacket, retrieved earlier by Chekov and currently thrown over the back of his chair, casts an eerily humanoid shadow. Shivers are wracking his body, every jolt awakening not-quite-dormant aches.

Everything smells like London when he pulls his jacket on. There’s the warmth lingering in the kitchen after Mrs. Hudson pulls scones out of the oven, the chemicals bubbling in the precarious pyramid of flasks by the sink, the car exhaust in the thoroughfares. Instinctually, John slips his hands into his jacket pockets. He’s startled when his fingers brush against something silky. It’s a handkerchief, stark white and glowing faintly in the dim light from the hall. In the corner is a delicately embroidered set of initials- _A.N._ , for Anthea. He doesn’t know her last name, and doubts he ever will. If he asked, she’d only give him that dodgy, lip-glossed, Mona Lisa smile.

The handkerchief had been given to him sometime in August. He had a runny nose when she’d spirited him off to Mycroft, and that was the day John was compelled to report that Sherlock had taken up smoking again.

_“Taken it up or simply smoked one?” Mycroft had asked._

_John confessed he hadn’t actually caught his flatmate in the act. A scrap of plastic had been left on the windowsill, a strip of gold foil laminated within. It was unmistakably a shred of the packaging commonly found on a new box of cigarettes._

_“And you are confident in your assessment of the presence of a piece of plastic?” Mycroft asked loftily, leaving John unsure as to whether he was passing judgment or was simply, as with all things, too detached._

_Sherlock’s not the only one allowed to deduce._

_“Convenient, isn’t it?” Mycroft pondered. “That it was lying there in plain sight. Waiting for you.”_

_What was it, then? A joke?_

_“Oh, no, my little brother certainly had a smoke. Just one, I’m inclined to believe. Today, after all, is the anniversary of the day his governess died.”_

Another cough claws its way up John’s throat. Not wanting to spoil the precious silk, he coughs into his empty hand. The blood is mechanically washed down the sink.

His aching fingers fold the handkerchief into a diamond, then carefully tuck it away. Anthea’s perfume lingers in the air. John remembers that today, in the year 2259, Anthea is dead. The thought makes him hollow.

But he finds something else in his pocket, something square and hard and dark.

It takes him a moment, but when the recognition hits, he’s left numb. It’s rosin, for Sherlock’s violin.

One of the corners is shattered, crumbling away in his palm into sticky white dust. It must have broken when he crashed into Scotty’s equipment after the warp.

The rosin was defeat; Lestrade said so.

_“Is that what he pays you for?” Lestrade had asked, picking bell peppers off his pizza. “Brewing his coffee? Combing his hair?”_

_“And fetching his slippers and sending his texts. He asks for it so often that I started keeping a spare on me for convenience.”_

_They glanced out the windows of Lestrade’s office. Sherlock was sparring with Donovan again, gesticulating wildly. She was smug, her smirk so toxic it made John’s blood boil- but Sherlock said something that made her freeze, and all her arrogance dissolve into shock._

_Sherlock winked at John, who immediately hopped to his feet so they could make their exit at the exact moment Donovan’s subdued humiliation would turn to fury, simply because it drove her mad. Sherlock had the progression of her reactions timed and had written out a neat little chart for John’s convenience, which they had propped up beside the skull and had giggled over like schoolboys._

_“Have some self respect, John!” Lestrade called after him._

\---

John is roused by a sharp rap on his door.

“Doctor Watson! You’re up early,” Moriarty chirps with feigned concern.

At the sight of a crazed grin, John bolts out of bed. “Take me to him,” he says bluntly.

Eyelashes fluttering coquettishly, Moriarty replies, “Doctor Watson, I’m not sure I understand who you-”

John slams his fist against the door. Moriarty raises an eyebrow, letting his Yeoman’s face waver. “No more games. Take me to Sherlock. Now.”

“Why all the rush?” Sweetness drips off his every word, repugnant and cloying. Seeing John’s obvious rage makes him grin all the wider. “Everything’s about you, isn’t it?” The psychopath sighs. “Faithful Yeoman Brook can’t always be at your beck and call. I’ve got things to look after. You know- starships to burn. Crews to massacre. Imperial fleets to topple. Although, I’ve been thinking, and I might keep Spock. Those ears are such a novelty, and since I’ve already got Sherlock- well, I’m not one to break up families.”

So Moriarty _had_ been watching. The revelation, which he had always considered but shunted to the back of his mind, makes his skin crawl. But exactly how much had he seen? Every conversation in the mess? Each time he had gone drinking with Bones or entertained Chekov? He doesn’t put it past Moriarty to have watched him while he slept.

“What shall I do with you, John?” Moriarty shoves his hands into his pockets, observing him with deadly contemplation, sloughing off Yeoman Brook’s skin and letting it slide to the floor. “Should I keep you in this glass box, let you watch as the Enterprise is torn asunder? Or should I set you loose with my Augments at your heels to watch how well you run?”

John knows he wouldn’t get very far. As if he can read his mind, Moriarty’s mulling it over too. Picturing a game cut short is making him pout.

“I forget- are you the heroic type, John?” Moriarty suddenly lights up. “You’ve made so many friends aboard this ship. I’ll send my Augments after them all! You’re only one man. You can only pick one.” Excited by the possibilities, he paces frantically before the door. “Maybe out of obligation you’ll run to the Captain first to try and warn him. Poor Jim’s divided his time so well between crying and fucking that he wouldn’t answer the door. So maybe you’d go to Leonard McCoy instead, although I advise you not to bother. An alcoholic is about as useful as a stray dog. I wouldn’t mind euthanizing it to end its misery. I suppose you’ll try and save your attention-starved _kochanie_ if it really came down to it. You know, I might keep him too. The Augment program always needs candidates, and it would be such a waste of talent.”

“You’re sick,” John says. “You’re mad and absolutely sick.”

As if to corroborate the fact, Moriarty presses a keycard to the scanner beside his door, which slides open.

John doesn’t move.

“Don’t look so glum, John. I’m granting you your last wish. Humor me.”

\---

Like the last time Moriarty took him to see Sherlock, the halls are conspicuously empty.

“The calm before the storm,” Moriarty sighs romantically. “I almost wish they knew. People in a panic are so invigorating.”

Every urge to throttle Moriarty is momentarily stifled when he sees Khan.

John reminds himself that it’s Khan, not Sherlock, sitting almost forlornly on his cot, as if he had been anxiously awaiting John’s return.

“You’ve got a visitor, Mr. Singh,” Moriarty announces.

John waits for the Augment to rise, to storm upon the glass and the infuriatingly innocent-looking psychopath in red, but Khan merely flaunts his usual languid haughtiness reserved for members of Starfleet.

This is Khan, after all. And all he sees is Yeoman Brook.

“You don’t recognize him?” John asks in disbelief, just to be sure. Shouldn’t the sight of one’s murderer be enough to jog one’s memory?

“Twice a day he brings me my meals,” Khan replies. “Was I expected to take notice of a servant?”

“Cheeky one, isn’t he?” Ever the actor, Moriarty tops off his lines with a nervous laugh. “You can go in if you like, Doctor Watson. Holler if you need me.” He lets John in through the side door of the cell, and then John and Khan are alone.

“Good. You’re here.” Khan crosses the floor in easy strides, reaching for John, who forcefully keeps him at arm’s length. “Did you find Deck 3?” he asks, visibly perturbed at John’s rejection.

“I did.”

“Excellent,” Khan declares with Sherlock’s hasty excitement. “You must have heard of Captain Kirk’s detour- or rather, shortcut. We’ll be docking in San Francisco in little more than thirty hours and you need to-”

“Stop,” John says with an iciness enough to startle Khan into a momentary silence.

“What’s wrong?” Khan’s eyes rove across his face, testing and rapidly recalculating.

“I know. I know what you were trying to make me do.”

“Free my crew! Surely you know of the importance of family, you must have one of your own-”

“Save it. It was bullshit, those coordinates. They weren’t coordinates at all.”

“Nonsense, you must have just gotten confused. Understandably so, being forced from your time-”

“Bullshit!” John shouts over him. “They were a command to free your crew onto the Enterprise. You were going to have them slaughter everyone onboard. I expect I was included.”

“Watson-”

“ _John_. My name is John.”

“John…”

But his name sounds wrong, coming from Khan, who paints the word with the fabricated tenderness that he had chosen not to notice the day before. The affectation makes him ill.

“It kills me that you lied.” His head is throbbing and his throat feels raw. “I know it isn’t really you who’s doing this, and that’s what makes it bearable. But it kills me.”

Khan reaches for him, but John knocks his hand away. “You can’t just- _kiss me_ and think I’ll do whatever you like! It’s twisted. Absolutely twisted.”

Khan ponders him for a moment, then slumps back, forfeiting his game. “You’re my only hope.”

That, John can believe.

“It’s not too late. If you would only remember, we could-”

In disgust, Khan crosses his arms and turns away. “Please. Not long from now, I’m going to be executed, or sent back to sleep. Don’t subject me to this drabble in my final hours.”

“I’m not giving up on you!” John grips Khan by the shoulder, spinning him roughly.

Khan shoves him away as easily as if he’s swatting a fly. John’s back slams into the glass wall painfully, jarring his teeth. A coughing fit overtakes him, one he had been trying to suppress since he entered the cell. Through bleary eyes, he can see Khan peering at him with confusion.

Flecks of blood splatter across his jacket sleeve, soaking into the black fabric and becoming invisible. But the fit doesn’t subside when he expects it to, and fumbling, trembling, he fishes out Anthea’s handkerchief. The block of rosin catches on the silk and falls to the floor, splintering in two.

“You are-”

“Shut it,” John rasps out. Like an old man, he stoops to retrieve the rosin, back pained and resisting, spine refusing to properly curve. “Shit,” he mutters, trying to press the jagged halves together, but too much of it has crumbled irreparably at his feet.

“What’s that?” Khan asks, peering at it suspiciously. He’s reluctant, as if humiliated to admit there’s something in the universe he doesn’t know.

John proffers it to him silently on his open palm. He can taste blood on his breath. “It was yours.”

Understanding clicks a moment later, and with it his smug superiority. “Ah, yes, that figment of your imagination played the violin.”

“Take it,” John says, holding out his palm insistently. “Like a normal person!” he snaps when Khan saunters over with a subtle but deliberately feline swing to his hips.

“I was going to ask you why you’re carrying around something that isn’t yours, but I think the answer is quite obvious.”

Pity. Khan is exuding an intolerable level of pity. He thinks John is a fool and he’s teasing him mercilessly. He’s rubbing salt in a wound dealt by heat and kisses that should have never happened and John’s own desperation. It’s there, written so plainly across his face- he thinks John’s absolutely pathetic. John is used to indifference from Sherlock, to disregard and unholy amounts of snark, but not cruelty. It’s a monster that wears Sherlock’s face, with all of Moriarty’s heartlessness and a penchant for pouncing on weakness. The only reason John is still alive is because, even knowing about the trick with the coordinates, he’s the last card Khan has left to play.

It is with utmost self control that John is able to shove aside his frustrations. “Just hold it.”

Khan obliges. Nothing happens.

John had been waiting for a miracle, and Khan knows it.

The Augment throws his head back and laughs, bone-chilling in the purity of its barbarity. He closes his fingers over the rosin and squeezes once, the tendons in his pale wrist flexing powerfully. When he opens his hand, he’s left with a small mound of fine white crystals, and lets them slip and scatter to the floor.

John wears his numbness like armor. “Do you remember the day we were held for ransom?” he asks calmly.

Khan raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected that last display to cause John to break. “No, Watson. But I do love fairy tales. Is there a happy ending? Do we make love on a bed of flowers?”

“There was a political faction targeting your brother. Mycroft.” John waits. The name still means nothing. “There was a power-hungry sod called Finchley with a vendetta against your brother who, as brilliant as he was, didn’t foresee that someday the enemies he made would come back to bite him.”

“Typical Mycroft!” Khan exclaims. He pulls up a chair, ready for his daily entertainment, and bestows upon John his most sardonic smile.

“They went for us,” John continues, ignoring him. “They got me when I called for a cab. I had a date with Lucy that night. You didn’t like her for some reason. Didn’t like any of the girls I brought home, but her especially. I think it was for something particularly stupid. When you met her, she said she liked your hair, and of course you thought she was patronizing you, because as always, the use of politeness within social conventions was beyond your comprehension.”

“That damn Lucy!”

“The cabbie was working for them, and when they knocked me out all I could think of was how after the case with the pink luggage and the pills, we really should have known better. They threw me in a meat freezer. You know, the warehouses with the hooks, slabs of beef hanging on the ends. When I woke up, you were already there, picking my handcuffs. I had never been happier to see you in my life, and that made you laugh. We scoured that warehouse top to bottom and you told me your three theories as to who had kidnapped us. But in the end we found nothing of use except a lightswitch, and even then every bulb except one was dead. Neither of us could kick down the door and I went into hysterics. About Lucy, and frostbite, and whether Mrs. Hudson noticed we were gone and if she had been hurt too. By then you narrowed down your deductions and were sure this all had to do with Mycroft. I was frustrated and tired, but you refused to give up, and hopped around the warehouse like an idiot and boxed the slabs of meat to stay warm. I was terrified because- Jesus Christ, Sherlock, we were trapped in a little black box and the only door was bolted shut. We tried to detach one of the meat hooks, but without tools, it was a lost cause. Whoever had kidnapped us would come back, and you wanted to be ready. We would have been dead long before if that was what they wanted. And so you were absolutely sure that it had to do with Mycroft, rather than us, and we were dealing with extortionists.

“I was furious again, because what the hell did it matter what kind of criminal they were? All your deduction didn’t do anything to get us out of that mess. We had nothing, and we ended up tearing out four ribs. _Cow ribs_ , longer than my arm.We were lucky the slabs weren’t frozen through or we couldn’t have managed. You said the higher temperature was another clue that our kidnappers weren’t murderers, just simple extortionists. _Simple_!” John scoffs, because that day all he had heard was a sacrilegious ‘harmless.’ “I was so fucking cold I could feel myself slowing down. Getting knocked on the head wasn’t helping. I wanted so badly to sleep, though I knew I shouldn’t. You compromised, and we sat on buckets in a corner beneath your coat, cow ribs on our laps, ready to club whoever came through that door. I told you I couldn’t feel my hands and you-” John falters. “You held them. I was so mortified I couldn’t look at you. You were staring at the broken lightbulb, face blanker than yours already is now. You told me later that we had been there for exactly 11 hours and 37 minutes. Your internal body clock, even through a kidnapping, was impeccable.” John allows himself to laugh. Khan says nothing.

“We sat under your coat all those hours and waited. And waited, and waited, and for the most part, you were absolutely silent. It was eerie. Most days you’re always muttering to yourself or me and instead you just… sat. But at one point you said, almost to yourself, as if even when holding my hands you’d forgotten I was there, _‘I wonder what’s keeping him?’_ ”

John pauses, throat stopping of its own accord, nothing to do for once with his chronic coughs. “And then I realized. You- you were waiting for Mycroft. You’d deduced it all had to do with him, and we were just the bargaining chips. I could practically hear you thinking. Rationalizing. And then questioning him, because your brother was one of the most powerful men in England, and surely he could have sent out a rescue squad, or found some kind of compromise to meet their demands. He was a man who had everything, after all. He could afford to pay just about any price to help his little brother. Even if Mycroft just assumed we could handle it on our own, as we did with everything else, you wanted him to come. You wanted him to care. You wouldn’t let me bring it up when I tried. The bulb went out then, and the only light came from under the door. I don’t know what possessed you- maybe you were only trying to distract me from prodding you about Mycroft, or maybe, like me, you gave in to the panic- but you told me about the governess you had as a child.

“That day was her birthday, and you had been in a cab on your way to her grave when they caught you. You hadn’t been in about five years, and I could tell you were upset that you’d missed the day again. You said her name was Annette. She looked after you when you lived solely with your mother, in an old Victorian place that was more museum than house. She taught you French, introduced you to Bach. Helped you with the violin. Read Immanuel Kant to you because the fairytales were too predictable. I think you loved her, or as much as you could. But you tried to backtrack then, told me she was a fool, that she used to try and fill your head with all sorts of nonsense- that the sun went ‘round the Earth, that sprites twisted your hair until it curled while you slept, that your father was a pirate. That was the remarkable thing about you. You had no idea- for once, no idea!- until I pointed out she had been teasing you. Playing with you. Because you were a child, and she was your nanny, and she cared for you dearly, and that’s the way things should be. She wasn’t an idiot, she’d read Copernicus. To _you_ more than once, in fact. You clearly had your mother’s hair. And she knew your father was a travelling professor, travelling more than he had to because he and your mother were estranged. You had a thing for pirates then. That, I heard from Mycroft. So she made your father the greatest of buccaneers, because she could see how terribly your family affected you, and how lonely you were. No one had ever spoken to you the way she did, not even your own mother. It wasn’t surprising that it took you years to understand all she had done.

“You told me she was sexually assaulted and murdered when you were fourteen. It was winter, and you decided to come home because you were tired of your boarding school. They were televising _Gianni Schicchi_ that night, and she promised she’d join you, because she hadn’t seen you since the summer. She didn’t show. You had a hunch and went searching. And then you, only fourteen years old, found her body in the snow.

“I think it was the adrenaline of believing I might die any second- you’re not the most comforting person in a hostage situation, sorry- but I almost told you then. You were so human that day, more than I’d ever seen. I always believed you were. We’d lived together for almost a year by that point, long enough for me to look at you and start to wonder if maybe we-”

This is when John realizes Khan hasn’t said anything. Hasn’t interrupted, thrown in any comments steeped with vulgarity, or called him a sentimental fool. He’s inhumanely still, gaze transfixed on the white rosin dusting the floor. He’s clutching the sides of his chair, knuckles gone white, jaw clenching to the point of pain.

“Khan?”

“Y-you’re-”

John rushes to him. Khan’s let go of the chair, hands fluttering aimlessly around his knees. John stills them, squeezes, and the Augment nearly wrings his hands in response. The machine of a man is stuttering, mouth trying to form words and failing, syllables garbled and strained. He’s a drowning man beating furiously at the ice above his head, a wisp buffeted by the turbulence, a suffocating wight clawing his way out of his grave. He isn’t pushing John away. He’s gripping him tightly, as if his life depends on it.

“J-J-”

“Yes! Yes, I’m here. Sherlock-!” John turns his palm over, the one still stained white from crushing the rosin. “This. You see this?” he says, showing Khan his own glittering fingers. “This was you. It was yours. Do you remember us? Me, on my armchair, typing away and too bothered to put wood on the fire. And you, by the window with your violin, in your dressing gown, sneaking glances out at everyone who passed by. You knew how flattering you were from that window. You were so fucking vain!” John laughs despite himself. Khan is trembling, hands flying from John’s grasp, searching wildly, settling like uncertain doves on his sleeves. He’s running his nails across the leather lapels of John’s jacket.

“You remember this?” John’s heart seizes the opportunity. “You had your great, swinging Belstaff coat. You always did like to be dramatic. I couldn’t very well show up to crime scenes in a reindeer jumper, could I? Had to keep up with you somehow. I remember the day I bought this- you said it made me look like a little wooden soldier, the kind your mother had put up around your house at Christmas. You weren’t allowed to touch them. When you were 11 that was the only thing she said to you that December. ‘Don’t play with the soldiers.’ She disappeared, hadn’t bothered to let you know where she’d gone, or even say goodbye. You assumed she was in Paris, because your father was in your family’s apartment in Essen at the time. Annette looked after you in that big, lonely house. Mycroft came back to babysit you just for Christmas Day so she could go home to her family. I thought of it as a compliment, you know. Me and my new jacket. You, who were always so focused on yourself, with no time to spend on the ants beneath your feet. I paid attention, the few times you would take notice of me that way.

“But God, how you drove me mad! Living with you meant never being able to catch my breath. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I loved every minute of it. And I don’t want it to end- not here, not now. Not when you can’t even properly remember my name.” He’s cupping the Augment’s face in his hands, stormy eyes boring into him, flashing and contorting in their struggle, and he hates this, this feeling of helplessness, abhorring the fact that he can’t do more. “Come on, Sherlock,” he says. “Come back to me. Please. Please-”

Falteringly, excruciatingly, shreds of Sherlock emerge. The animalistic aggression in his countenance fades, and his murderous, robotic shell melts away in John’s hands. He’s fighting again, the hint of a flame flickering against the will of a tempest, and just when John’s name begins to leave his lips-

The door slams open, and someone hisses a sharp command in a language John doesn’t understand.

Sherlock snaps to attention, hands held rigidly at his sides, heels together and toes apart to form a crisp V. He’s a doll, perfectly frozen in plastic packaging, hardly breathing, face devoid of all emotion, and most frighteningly, of all thought.

“Moriarty!” John snarls at the psychopath standing smugly behind him. “What did you do to him? Sherlock? Sherlock! Snap out of it, Sherlock! You remembered me, you can remember Moriarty-”

“Don’t waste your breath, Johnny. Although I have to admit I’m quite impressed. Didn’t expect you to get through to him as well as you did. I knew you were hot for him, but I must have miscalculated the extent of his feelings for _you_. Mistress Adler I could understand, but I never thought Sherlock would fall for someone so painfully _ordinary_.”

“Stop this- whatever you’re doing. Just stop this!”

“‘fraid I can’t, Johnny. As I told you before, I’ve got a tight schedule.”

“I don’t understand!” It’s terrifying John to see Sherlock so absolutely mindless. “He was here. Alive!”

“Don’t you ever listen?” Moriarty saunters over, phaser pointed at John, who has no choice but to grit his teeth and step aside. “I _own_ him. Sherlock- I mean, _Khan Noonien Singh_ -” he giggles at the seeming pretentiousness of the name- “and all of his little friends in the cargo hold.” With a filthy lasciviousness that burns John to his core, Moriarty caresses Sherlock’s cheek, lingering over the sharp planes. “Pretty, isn’t he? Always was, but there’s something about the Augment process that just made him _glow_. I know he told you he was one of the prototypes, but there’s something about him that makes him outshine the others… Call me a sap, but he’s always been my favorite. And now he’s all mine!”

Sherlock does nothing, not even when Moriarty dares slip his hand beneath his shirt-

“Don’t!” Enraged, John lunges forward, a punch aimed straight for the madman.

But he’s slow today, slower than normal, muscles groaning and aching even through his fury. Moriarty sidesteps him easily, and too quickly for John to retaliate, has his arm pinned behind his back and his face crushed against the glass.

“It’s been fun, John,” Moriarty hisses in his ear. “It really has. Watching you run about my ship, peeking into the sorry little lives of the drunkards and saccharine bastards who I will waste within the hour. You’d be surprised how quickly they became fond of you, the little wooden soldier with a cuddly _je ne sais quoi_. You know, for a while I toyed with the idea of keeping you, too. You could have been my 21st century souvenir.” He smirks against John’s skin, making him shudder, and suddenly hurls him away.

John stumbles and finds himself at Sherlock’s feet. He prays it’s Sherlock, fears that it’s Khan, and for the first time, really doesn’t know. The man who was his best friend is still frozen in place, staring straight ahead, into nothing, and for all his perfection is brought to a lifeless husk.

And then Moriarty whispers something twisted and sinister in an accent John can’t place, and Khan’s- yes, _Khan’s_ \- eyes snap down to meet him.

John only has a split second to process his horror before Khan sends him flying. He barrels into the chairs and the table, and then he’s being thrown again, weightless in Khan’s wake. It’s in a moment of respite when he registers the damage he’s been dealt in the blink of an eye. He will break soon. He’s porcelain in Khan’s hands and by all rights he should be dead.

So why isn’t he?

Khan is toying with him.

Or, rather, Moriarty. The Starfleet imposter hisses out sharp, staccato commands, tugging on the strings of his marionette with glee. Moriarty’s dragging out his death. He wants him to suffer, to remember with each blow that this was once Sherlock, to realize that no one is here to save him and he will die slowly, cold and alone, in a universe where he doesn’t belong.

Even as John recognizes the manipulation, the emotional annihilation that is Moriarty’s trademark, he cannot help the spike of fear in his heart.

“Had to pay another three million to to install the personalized voice commands,” Moriarty drawls. “Mike Stamford thought it excessive, but I insisted. He never had much ambition. I think I got my money’s worth, don’t you?”

There’s no time to breathe, to strike back, or even to raise his arms in defense- Khan is a dark blur, calibrated to fight, to destroy, and John can only be battered about so many times before his brittle bones give.

Khan delivers a swift punch to his gut, making him double over. He’s reeling, collapsing, the white floors now splattered with red rushing up to meet him-

With another blow too quick to anticipate, John’s whirling, slammed onto his back, with Khan looming over him. His fingers, like steel, curl mercilessly around John’s throat.

Desperately, fruitlessly, John scrabbles at the constricting joints. His limbs flail uselessly, unable to throw off the Augment. But the pressure doesn’t increase. He can still breathe, just barely. Khan is simply pinning him down with sheer strength, leaving him with the small blessing of gasping weakly for air. The Augment doesn’t flinch when John’s body convulses with his chronic coughing, made more violent by his abuse, and flecks of blood mar his pale skin.

John croaks Sherlock’s name hoarsely as his vision blurs. Khan is a faceless shade.

Moriarty barks another command and cackles when Khan’s hands immediately tighten in earnest, causing John to sputter.

“He cried when the Augment experiments first began. The great Sherlock Holmes, crying! He was afraid, didn’t think he’d make it once Stamford and his team explained what they were doing to him. And I said no, my darling, just wait and see. You will be _magnificent_.” Moriarty’s pacing back and forth in excitement, somewhere just past John’s line out sight. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says abruptly, “about setting you loose. I want you to die, right here, so I can see that light go out in person. I have waited years to watch you die, John Watson. Yours will be the first corpse of many I will burn in this century. You’re an inauguration of sorts- isn’t that fun? And when you are gone I will take this starship, and the universe will kneel at my feet. I will show them fear in a handful of dust.” He gives Khan his last command. John’s being throttled. “Goodbye, John. And thank you. You were a great diversion.”

Khan could have snapped his neck long ago. It would be instant. Painless. But those are two things Moriarty does not want, and Khan will obey his master to the letter.

The last of John’s breath escapes him and stars blaze across his eyes, blurring the room, the wraith above him, and the figure of his hatred just beyond. The pressure growing in his head- it’s unbearable. Unbearable to lie here in the cold, a fog rolling across the floors, seeping and settling over his limbs. Unbearable to know that they are in a room made of glass, on a ship full of officers, yet there will be no one to see him pass. Unbearable to think of his sister, perpetually one step forward and two steps back on the path to a shambling recovery, waiting for him every Tuesday afternoon  and retreating back into the chasm of her old ways. Unbearable to imagine Bones, or even worse, Chekov finding his body, and thinking he had been lying all along. Unbearable, most of all, to realize that he and Sherlock have come all this way and it will count for nothing, absolutely nothing, and he will never know what John went through, what it felt like to see him fall, to hear him deny ever having met, to endure those near-fatal hours of doubt-

Unbidden, she comes to him now- Irene Adler, beautiful and savage, curled up on his armchair, in Sherlock’s coat, as if she owned them. And Sherlock had looked at her in a way that made his stomach turn. That night, he had wondered what it would be like to be the object of that gaze. He had wished, wanted- But he is ordinary. Plain, ordinary John Doe in the end. Irene was brilliant. Sherlock’s equal. And John is-

The hands around his neck are trembling, ghosting ever so lightly over his skin.

Someone is screaming. The world is crashing; the world is burning. John can’t make out the words, the slathering, unintelligible sounds spewing from the devil’s maw. But the pressure is gone. He’s floating.

A howl of rage-

A door slams.

And then, coming through the mist of his mind, there’s the pale, dark-haired wraith again, leaning over him, peering at him closely, shielding him from the harshness of the blaring lights.

“John.”

John blinks.

The world rushes back as air stabs into his lungs anew.

“John!”

They stare at each other- John, propped up on his elbow, wheezing and hacking, and the Augment crouched beside him.

John ventures- “Sherlock?”

He barrels into John, mouth on his, knocking him onto his back once more.

It’s not smooth and serpentine like Khan- Sherlock is clumsy, smashing his face too hard against John’s, teeth nipping too sharply in his excitement. He pulls away, embarrassed, too aware of his lack of experience, of the newness of the act.

“Oh, yes,” John laughs, and Sherlock can’t contain his own grin. “That is definitely you.”


	6. Chekov's Gun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We sincerely apologize for the delay.
> 
> J was hospitalized in January- yes, it seems like we have a thing for hospitals. But we're back and have already begun work on the last chapter. 
> 
> Thank you for your patience. And don't forget to visit sweetntwenty on Tumblr for general Starlock content and updates!

Sherlock’s trying to kill him with kisses.

“Careful!” John winces as Sherlock’s eagerness nearly lays his injured body flat.

Immediately, Sherlock recoils, eyes roving across John’s familiar black sleeves, Starfleet blue peeking out around the cuffs, and the bruises he knows he gave him. “I’m sorry,” he says, shame rising. “I tried to stop myself. But Moriarty, he- they beat the words into me. Stamford and the rest. I forgot myself then- even Khan forgot himself. But when he told me to finish you off I just couldn’t. It felt like I was on fire, John.”

“It’s alright,” John says, and he will _not_ cry, not now. “You know I forgive you. For everything.”

“Everything?” Sherlock murmurs. “Can you really?” A shadow crosses his face, and for a long moment he’s not with John, but- strapped to a medical table, Stamford hovering above him with a scalpel in hand? Bombing London? Murdering Pike in cold blood?

John can only imagine, but from the way Sherlock’s mind brushes off the dust and lingers, there must be more he’s done that even Starfleet doesn’t know about, deeds too horrible to share.

But John wants him to. He can handle it, whatever he’s done. As far as he’s concerned, that was Khan, not his detective. Now, it can’t be helped.

“Are you alright?”

Resignation hardens into weariness. “I’m not the one who nearly died.”

“And I’m not the one who was bioengineered two and a half centuries ago. Are you…?”

“Immortal?” Sherlock snorts. “I’ve wondered that myself. No, Moriarty kept me in cryostasis all that time. A few years ago I was woken by an Admiral Marcus- accidental, from what I could see, but once he realized what I was, he-” He stops, expression clouding. John waits for a lie, but he only says, “Luckily enough, the timing was convenient for Moriarty, who I suppose hovered about me until he was ready to take the Enterprise. But you, John- what in the world are you doing here?”

 _An admiral up for treason_ , Kirk had said. “Moriarty warped me on right after I saw you fall. From St. Bart’s.”

“Ah.” And that’s all Sherlock needs to piece John’s last three days together.

“We need to get out of here,” John says, dragging himself to his feet reluctantly. In another time and place, they stay curled up on the floor, limbs entangled… John is loathe to leave. “Where’s Moriarty?”

“Ran off before I could snap his neck.”

“If we got to the warp room-”

“I can take us home.”

“To London? Our London?”

“I’ll figure it out. The more pressing issue is getting there intact.”

“Not impossible, though?”

“There are no absolutes.” His lips quirk at the paradox.

If Sherlock can find a cause to smile, there must be hope. John can work with that.

“Are we locked in?” he asks, eyeing the shut door with frustration.

“Naturally.” Sherlock rises and runs his fingers along the glass wall. “Perhaps I can…”

He hears the impending stampede long before John does. He shoves John behind him, seconds before Kirk kicks his way into the cell. A troop of security guards in red file in after him.

“Don’t touch him,” Sherlock hisses at Kirk with an almost animalistic wrath, arms thrown open as if he might shield John from their sight completely- but there are ten phasers pointed at them from all sides, and superhuman or not, he shouldn’t gamble with what a shot to the heart might do. Resistance is a game played in vain.

“Step aside, Khan,” Kirk orders. He’s confused, furious- this has all the trappings of a plot coming to fruition- but Sherlock is still the terrorist here, not John Watson, who’s somehow wormed his way into the hearts of his brilliant bridge crew. He can’t bring himself to fire. “Move!”

“Not until I get some sort of assurance that John won’t be harmed!”

“First-name basis, are you?” Suspicions manifesting, coagulating into not-quite-lies and truths impossible to conceal.

“Swear it!”

“We’re not monsters,” Kirk scoffs. “We’ll escort him back to his cell, no harm done if he comes quietly, and he’ll be put to trial as an accessory to terrorism at worst. But speaking of monsters, Watson, did you know your friend here ripped off one of our Yeoman’s ears? With his teeth, from the looks of it. Bones found imprints on the cartilage.”

A hysteric laugh escapes from John. “Did you really?”

“A second more and it would have been his head,” Sherlock snarls.

“Yeoman Brook has been nothing but kind to you!” Kirk bellows. “Too kind, if you ask some. And you talk about wasting his life as if it’s nothing!”

“Yeoman Brook,” Sherlock spits the moniker out with distaste, “is, like myself and John, a man out of his time. He’s a psychopath and his real name is Jim Moriarty, and he’s played you for fools!”

Kirk looks between Sherlock and his own officers incredulously.“Do you come up with that bullshit on the fly?” With a sharp jerk of his head, the officers are hustling forward, closing the gaps and handcuffing a seething Sherlock and a petrified John. As they begin to haul John away with a frightening mechanical efficiency, a little corner of hell, courtesy of Sherlock, raging and firing obscenities, breaks loose. Before rounding the corner, John catches a glimpse of a hypospray burying into Sherlock’s neck, and his body slumping in response.

Hatred and terror swell simultaneously in John’s chest. They were so, so close- Sherlock, finally coherent, memories brought to the forefront, kissing him without pretense, with, dare he say it, joy- and now it’s gone, ripped from them both. By Starfleet, by _Jim Kirk_ -

John twists haphazardly in the officers’ grasp, slams his bound fists against one of their skulls- but there are too many, and he’s unceremoniously thrown back into his room, the door slammed in his face with a sinking finality.

“You know what the funny part is? It was Spock who told me to believe in you. Never thought I’d see a Vulcan proven wrong,” Kirk says with contempt. “And if Yeoman Brook wants to press charges against _both_ of you for assault and battery- well, I’m not going to say no to that.”

“His name is Jim Moriarty!” John shouts at Kirk’s retreating figure. “There is no Richard Brook! He’s Jim Moriarty-” But Kirk is gone, and then John is alone. In his fury, he kicks the only chair in his room, cursing when it bounces unsatisfyingly against the wall and is virtually unscathed.

Jim Kirk- that bastard. That absolute son-of-a-bitch bastard. Why won’t he listen? Why won’t he give John and Sherlock a fucking chance? May he rot. May he find a hole in an airlock and choke in a vacuum-

“You’re a lot like Scotty. Small, but with a surprising amount of room for vicious.”

“Bones!”

“Or maybe you’re more like Jim. You’ve got a knack for finding yourself in deep shit.” Bones doesn’t bother smiling.

“Thank god you’re here. Listen, Yeoman Brook isn’t-”

“Isn’t who we think he is?” Bones crosses his arms, and- no, not pity, John needs anything but pity- “He’s been a part of the Enterprise for a long time, longer than me and Jim. He was onboard when Pike was Captain. Do you see what I mean, John? This whole time, I’ve been- understanding. Sympathetic of all you went through. Khan looks like your old friend- sure. You’ve been through a shock. But this? Trying to tell us Richard Brook, of all people, is the bad guy here? Take a step back, John. It’s ridiculous on too many levels.”

“Don’t you think it’s suspicious? That someone would be in Starfleet for so long and stay stuck at what, the level of a clerk? Of a security guard?”

To that, Bones can only shrug noncommittally. “Some people never leave the mailroom. Doesn’t mean they’re not damn good at it.”

“What are you saying, though? That you don’t believe me? About... anything? Did you ever?”  

“John…” A contorted, barely withheld grimace. “The time travel bits- you, constantly so confused- I don’t think anyone could play that part. Like we said, it’s all happened before. It’s just- this, with Richard Brook! The poor guy was a bank teller in Washington before he joined Starfleet. And you let Khan practically tear his ear from his head!”

“He survived, then?”

“With me working on him? Of course he did.”

“It’s a damn shame-”

“No! John, you can’t talk like that. He is who he says he is. We’ve known him- we’ve all known him. For years! Anything else is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible! No- don’t you dare look at me like that. Jesus Christ, you think I’m crazy.”

“I think you’ve undergone a recent trauma-”

“He’s Jim Moriarty, alright? He’s a murderer and a criminal mastermind, and he’s the one who warped me here. He once strapped me to a set of bombs with snipers pointed on me, as if that wasn’t enough. On my last day in London he drove Sherlock to jump off a roof-” But that’s it, that’s the last straw, and all Bones needed to hear to rationalize John’s behavior, to chalk it all up to extreme expressions of grief. “No! Don’t go- Bones, please don’t go. You have to help me. I’m not making this up! I don’t know how, but he’s been lying to all of you- Bones! Bones! Jesus Christ, no-”

Another swift kick to the chair. A leg snaps.

\---

John doesn’t know how long he remains huddled on the floor, back against the metal footboard of his cot.

The door is locked- naturally. The window, obviously, presents no opportunity. He’s already broken off another of the chair’s legs and holds both in his right hand. Inhale for four counts, exhale for eight. Sherlock’s internal body clock- how does he do it? Is he constantly counting, subdividing every waking hour, every minute? What about sleep? Does he remember the exact position of the sun in the sky? But that won’t help here, not out in the black. Maybe they aren’t even in the same solar system.  

His right wrist is aching from the steel’s weight. He shifts them into the crook of his curved body- like the bloody, ice-encrusted cow ribs that rested on his lap while he sat on a bucket, Sherlock holding his numb hands, waiting in the dark to die-

“Doctor!”

It’s Chekov. Poor Chekov, come to his door like a flustered, twitching guardian angel.

“Have you come to tell me you think I’ve been mad this whole time too?” John thinks bitterly of Bones.

“No.” Chekov frowns, as if the idea is absolutely preposterous. “No, of course not.”

“Then why are you here? I’ve just about had it with Starfleet, and no offense, but you showing up in the same bloody gold shirt as Kirk isn’t making me feel any better.”

“You zhink I am going to hurt you?”

...oh, John is an ass. A complete ass as usual. Why does he always behave this way towards Chekov, who’s looking at him like a dog that’s been kicked too many times? He feels admonished as he sputters, “No. No, of course not.”

Chekov is too easy of a target; that’s the problem. And John is, too often, incapable of separating the kid who brought him chocolate from his uniform.

“Did you hurt him too?” Chekov asks quietly.

“Who?”

“Yeoman Brook.”

“He’s not-” John exhales loudly. “He’s not ‘Yeoman Brook.’ He’s a man from my time, Jim Moriarty, and he’s Sherlock’s arch-enemy. Yes, arch-enemy. People apparently have those. I bet your Captain Kirk has a couple, with the way he gets around. He’s the one that warped me here.”

“Zhey said you were telling such stories.” A frown in consternation.

“They’re not stories, they’re the truth! Do you think I _want_ to be here?”

Oh, John is certainly a smooth talker today. He shouldn’t have said that, no, especially not to the boy who brought him the spangled quilt and the tin star.

“I didn’t touch him,” John says, although he very much wished he had. If only he had moved quicker; maybe Moriarty would have lost the other ear as well. Then, suddenly, he realizes- “Watch the tapes! You’ve got security cameras, don’t you? You’ll see. You’ll hear him confess everything. He has Sherlock under some sort of mind control; he’s the one who sold him to the Augment program. He had Sherlock try to strangle me to death.”

“Zat is zhe zhing, Doctor Watson,” Chekov replies, shifting uncomfortably on his heels. “Zhe crew has already checked zhe tapes, and zhey are blank. It is an… unfortunate pattern, Doctor. One zat zhe Keptin has noticed. Every time you go to visit your friend, zhe security footage is lost. He believes very strongly zat you have been tampering wizh zhem.”

Fuck. Fuck Moriarty; doubtless this is his own doing.

He tells Chekov this, but the young officer does not seem convinced. He is not surprised. It was hardly worth a shot.

“Can you help me?” Not that John deserves it.

“Wizh what?”

“I want to talk to him. To Sherlock.”

“You are under strict orders to be confined here until we reach Earth.”

“Right, right. Of course I am. But he’s my best friend. They kidnapped him and they turned him and it’s been over two hundred years since he’s seen me, and in a few hours they’ll take him away again. Forever. Who knows what they’ll do with me? I know he’s done some terrible things but- I just want to talk to him. You understand that, don’t you? I want to talk to him while I still can. I want to say goodbye to my best friend properly.”

“I do not… I do not know-”

“Please. Chekov, please. This is the only thing I will ever ask of you. You can supervise me. I only want to see him.”

“You are asking me to disobey my keptin’s orders.”

“I’m asking you for compassion.”

A heartbeat, too loud, thrumming in his ears. Another. He’s holding his breath.

“...you and he are togezher, are you not?”

That was not the reaction John was expecting.

“You… feel for him. Somezhing very special. It is quite clear to me, from what I have observed from you speaking about him.”

“...yes,” John says uncertainly. Has he been so transparent? Or is Chekov really so young a romantic at heart?

“...zhis will not end well.” And then Chekov finally gives in, needing very few actual nudges from John himself, and with a few quick patterns on the keypad- did he know the password all along? Or did he find some way around the system?- unlocks the glass door.

The steel chair legs, one in each of John’s hands, cause Chekov to double-take. “Doctor, are you-”

“Hush now.” John, having gotten what he wanted, brushes past him with a business-like ambivalence. By now, he’s remembered the way to Sherlock’s cell. Begrudgingly, he allows Chekov to lead when the young officer points out he would be better suited to skulking ahead around corners as a lookout.

\---

“ _Finally_.” With haughty impertinence, Sherlock untangles his slender, crossed legs off his cot and swings upright. “Six seconds later than I expected. Forgive me, I’m still a bit groggy. They gave me enough to sedate a horse.”

“You’re awake!” Chekov exclaims, astounded.

Sherlock gives John a strange look. “Did I not just demonstrate the ultimate futility of my being given enough tranquilizers to obliterate an animal ten times my size?”

“Don’t be an ass, he’s letting you out.”

“Let him out? You said you only wanted to talk!” Chekov protests.

“John says all sorts of things when he’s after something, doesn’t he?”

“Sherlock, you’re not helping.”

“Come now, Zhukov-”

“ _Chekov_ -” John corrects.

“Chekov. Dearest. Did you honestly think John was going to settle with ‘talking’? You’re a bit of a prodigy, aren’t you? And you honestly fell for that?”

“Shut up, Sherlock! Chekov, he’s just being a rude little fuck. It’s the way he-”

“Did you lie to me?” Chekov’s eyes are large, glassy, and if he cries John isn’t sure if he’ll break down first from the guilt or the frustration.

Whether from a penchant for the dramatic or because of his usual social ineptitude, Sherlock blurts out, “Of course he did!”

Utterly aghast, John looks between the two of them, mouth agape as he searches for- what, another blatant lie?

“I will not do it.” Chekov crosses his arms. “I took you here to talk. So talk! And zhen we will head straight back.”

In the subsequent second of silence, John almost allows himself to believe Sherlock’s gained enough sense to bite his tongue- until Sherlock bursts out laughing. Chekov flinches; unlike John, he still sees a ghostly murderer behind the glass. And that murderer is giggling uproariously at him.

“Don’t be daft, Ensign,” Sherlock says, still chuckling. “You’re opening that-” He pauses, head snapping to the side, augmented hearing having sensed something far beyond John and Chekov’s reach. “Four seconds,” he hisses. “Raise your arms above your head. Both of you!”

They are the longest four seconds of John’s life.

It’s a red-shirted guard, stumbling upon them purely by accident, from the way he double-takes at the sight of John and his hand stutters as it flies to his phaser.

Keep your hands raised, yes, look harmless, look like surrender, draw him in-

It’s almost ridiculous, how much he absolutely trusts Sherlock.

“Ensign Chekov?” the guard calls uncertainly as he hovers nearer.

John’s eyes dart to Chekov, whose fingers are trembling in the air.

“Please-” Chekov begins.

“He’s our hostage,” Sherlock announces.

Hostage? Yes, hostage- hostage means Chekov isn’t culpable and he won’t have to confront one of his worst fears, defying Starfleet. At least, not just yet-

“Ensign Chekov?” Twenty more feet.

“Y-yes!” Chekov blurts out, shuddering as Sherlock’s unfeeling stare, unvoiced but imagined threats abound, bores into him. “Zhey are holding me against my will!”

Fifteen-

“John Watson, step away from the Ensign!” the guard demands, brandishing his gun.

Without lowering his arms, John steps in front of Chekov, meeting the guard halfway.

Ten-

“Turn around. Feet shoulder-width apart. Hands on the glass.”

Five-

As the guard reaches for something on his belt- a pair of handcuffs? A communicator? John whirls around, his speed and volatility catching the man off guard. He drops his gun when John strikes, and with a second blow to the head, doubles over, falling to his knees. Swiftly, John retrieves the guard’s gun and heaves him over.

“He smashed his communicator when he fell,” Sherlock informs him. “Lucky.”

“I know.”

The guard is curled up, clutching his head, eyes almost crossing from training so hard on the barrel of the phaser.

“Quickly-” Sherlock urges.

“ _I know_.” Mercilessly, John bears down upon the guard. “Open his door.”

“The Captain will-”

“The Captain will do _shit_.” John fires the phaser, burning a concentric crater inches from his skull. “All I need for you to do is let him out. And I swear we won’t hurt you.”

The guard- a wise one- shakily staggers to his feet and allows himself to be marched to the keypad planted to the left of the sidedoor cut out of the white walls.

“Go on.” John buries the point of the phaser in his ribs.

There’s a flurry of fumbling that makes Sherlock curse loudly. In his terror, the guard enters the wrong code. Halfway through his third failed attempt, Sherlock kicks the door, shouting, “Use your bloody card!”

The card is fished out fearfully- John growls that his card better be the only thing he’s reaching for- and then dropped.

“Jesus Christ.” John stoops to retrieve the card and slides it through the keypad’s scanner himself, suppressing his sigh of relief when the door clicks open.

Sherlock is immediately upon the guard, who is in the process of turning to run. A swift kick to knock him off his feet, and then he’s hauled into Sherlock’s stark prison, the door slamming shut.

There’s a moment- another scene, almost electric, that could only gain life in Baker Street- where Sherlock is standing free before him, watching him expectantly, and he can almost-

Chekov lets out a whimper of horror.

Rolling his eyes, Sherlock grabs the navigator by the scruff of his neck and casts him out into the hall.

“Wait! Wouldn’t it have been better to keep him in your cell too?” John says. They don’t need Chekov anymore. “He doesn’t need to get hurt.”

“Check the clearance on that card.”

“Yeoman.” And a string of numbers and letters.

“Not a very high-ranking officer, was he? We need the navigator, or we risk wasting too much time in the process of overriding any doors we find.”

“How do you know zat I am a navigator? Did you tell him, Doctor?” Chekov asks, still rabbit-frozen where he had been thrown.

Sherlock takes a breath- “John has told me nothing about you, but I know from your gold shirt that you’re in the Command division, as they call it in Starfleet. But where exactly within Command, as you’ve already got a lovely Captain, and judging from your age, you’re most likely not ranked higher than he? It’s a simple process of elimination- so are you from administration or from the helm? It must be the helm. Again, your age- a teenager doesn’t join the droll bureaucracy and maddening pomp and circumstance of Starfleet to file paperwork. He certainly doesn’t do it willingly if he’s proven he has a taste for adventure- proven, yes, by your unwavering decision to remain on the Enterprise despite the near-catastrophe of the Nero incident and the destruction of the planet Vulcan that took place little more than a year ago. The resilience of youth or your true nature? The distinction at the moment is irrelevant. So, you’re on the bridge- helmsman or navigator? Navigator, most definitely navigator, because you spend your free time with Engineering. There’s an oil smudge on your left knee, and your pants are black so you didn’t notice, but I can see it refracting the light. Engineering, astrophysics, vaulted equations- you find it all thrilling. The executor is irrelevant- _you_ solve the puzzles, which, to you, is the real game.

“He’s just showing off,” John says without any real exasperation, because in truth, he’s missed this, and for a few days he had feared he would never hear Sherlock babble this way again.

Ever undaunted, Sherlock continues, “And I can tell just through further simple observation that you’re from a little, inconsequential town in Russia, you had three cats you were mildly fond of, and the first two died from exposure, so you’re unwilling to take on any more pets in your lifetime. When you’re not being tutored by Engineering you prefer reading Czeslaw Milosz to Yeats. In addition, two of your teeth are artificial. You were unpopular at Starfleet Academy and were bullied an average of 2.86 times a week.”

“If that was your idea of humanizing yourself to keep from terrorizing him, it’s not working,” John says.

“Fine, we’ll keep him if there’s really no other way.”

“Keep me?” Chekov squeaks.

“Funny, isn’t it? Almost like you actually are our hostage.”

“Sherlock!”

“March, both of you. We’ve no more time to waste.”

\---

“Is it still true?” John whispers. It’s a dangerous game they’re playing. Alerting anyone to their presence is the last thing they need.

“What is?” Sherlock whispers back.

“What you said to me when you were still Khan. That all you need is one gun and then nothing would stand in our way.” John is holding the guard’s phaser; as they only have one weapon between them at the moment, it had been deferred to John, as logic dictated that the un-Augmented person would be near-useless without it.

“Oh, it’s very true. I may be awake, John, but it doesn’t reverse what Stamford and his team did to me.”

They’re prowling the Enterprise’s halls, padding carefully, quietly, maintaining a constant distance behind Chekov, who, being the only legal passenger on the ship, was sent out first again.

“Think he’ll run?” John asks.

It only takes a second for Sherlock to scrutinize him. “No. He won’t. From the way he acts around you, he likes you far too much to do so. He’s passive at best. He feels he has some sort of immunity. The hostage act was a good idea.”

“It was your idea.”

“Wasn’t it?”

That smile. John is here to protect that smile-

Despite his distance, Sherlock hears someone approaching before Chekov does.

“There’s a sort of barracks three hundred feet down this hall. I feared the odds would work against us here. Grab him.”

John takes Chekov by the wrist, and Sherlock grabs John, and then their chain windmills about until Sherlock has Chekov by the scruff of his neck and is pressing him against a scanner they had just passed. A horizontal red beam sweeps across a stunned Chekov’s cheekbones, focusing on his eyes. A whoosh of air- a set of doors slides open to admit what it believes is the will of the ship’s navigator.

Sherlock hustles them both in, and the three duck away, Sherlock with grace, Chekov with a shudder, and John stumbling and bruising his knees. Footsteps click past against the Enterprise’s glossy black floors.

No time is wasted- Sherlock is up on his feet again the instance he deems the danger has passed.

The room is full of oddities- weapons, mostly, strangely curved guns, lasers that seem to be built to wrap around one’s arms, viciously hooked blades. There’s a rack of clothing- a glittering set of armor that seems to be made of intricately braided chainmail catches John’s eye. Beside it hangs a dozen cloaks, some inky, some brilliantly plumed, some with more sleeves and necks than would suit a human. All of it fantastical, terrible, alien. And at the end-

With a flourish of familiarity, Sherlock plucks the last coat from its hanger and dons it. It’s a black leather trenchcoat, the lapels grand and ribbed, accentuating the slenderness of his form and his haughty, princely air. It’s not the wool Belstaff coat John is accustomed to. But it’s a return to their past, a past that for John is merely a few days old, the reawakening of normalcy and the sight he came to expect every day in their flat.

Sherlock doesn’t know John’s captivation. He’s browsing the impressive array of weapons on the wall. And then he senses a stillness in the air, notices John watching. John, following that captivation, knowing that this room, this strange little collection of things the Enterprise has reaped in its trans-galactic journeys is their last safe house. The last place they will be away from cameras, from prying eyes- Chekov, for a moment, doesn’t matter. He won’t mind; he might even expect it. And so John grabs Sherlock by the fanned lapels of Khan Noonien Singh’s coat and kisses him.

His lips are smooth and cool to the touch. John kisses again and again- the feeling is too fleeting, evaporating too readily. He could kiss him a dozen times and it would never be enough.

When they pull away, Sherlock clears his throat, a pink tinge spreading across his normal pallor. “Yes. You did have that look on your face.”

“Are you filing away my behavior into that mind palace, Sherlock Holmes?”

“It fascinates me, as most dangerous things do.”

“I couldn’t help it. You look so much more like yourself now.” Progress; the coat is the manifestation of progress. There’s a chance this suicide mission won’t end in flames. He can bring himself to believe that, with Sherlock and his turned-up collar by his side. It’s like the old days, the not-so-far-away days. And they came out alive every time.

Sherlock’s mild amusement dissolves into urgency as he plucks one gun after another from the walls, inspecting the barrels and counting the remaining ammunition.

“We have to get to the surveillance room,” John says, accepting a silver handgun and a belt for both it and the phaser.

“Surveillance? Why?” Sherlock tests the weight of a rifle against what dimly resembles a shotgun, then decides against both.

“Moriarty’s been fucking around with the cameras since I got here. If he wants to know where we are, he’ll be watching.”

“And we shall certainly meet him.” Sherlock finally selects a pistol, inlaid with gold leaf and silver trappings, and almost impulsively, a translucent, crescent-shaped blade, carved into two wicked points. “What?” he says to John’s raised eyebrow. “I’ve been recently resurrected. I deserve a little luxury.”

“Zhis is not luxury! Zhis is theft!” Chekov’s snatched up a phaser, and although John is fairly certain that Starfleet trains its officers in at least the basics of firearms, he has it pointing in the ambiguous space between John and Sherlock. He won’t hold John at gunpoint outright because he’s here for John in the first place; threatening Sherlock is equivalent to bearing a deathwish. Automatic weapons paired with indecisiveness- and on top of that, the convoluted combination of the brashness and hesitancy of youth- won’t end well.

“This is necessity,” Sherlock replies composedly.

“We don’t _want_ to hurt people!” John exclaims.

“Zhen tell him to leave zhe sword! And your guns! Every weapon in zhis room except for zhe phasers is designed to draw blood. To kill. Eizher you are lying to me, or you are lying to yourselves. Doctor Watson- Mr. Holmes- zhis is not a charlatan’s premonition. If you bring zhose weapons out onto zhe Enterprise, you will fire zhem. And people will die.”

“John, remind me- is this the sort of situation where I reply truthfully or feed him gumdrops?”

Jesus Christ. To hell with both of them. “Chekov, put down the goddamn gun.”

“Not unless you put away yours!”

“It appears diplomacy isn’t very effective,” Sherlock says testily.

“Don’t-!”

But Sherlock is obstinately wielding his gilded pistol, and unlike Chekov, he does not let his target waver. “Toss me the phaser, Pavel Chekov.”

“And leave you with all zhe power?”

“Think for a moment- switch on the lights in that Starfleet-inundated mind of yours for just a second. There are two of us and one of you, and we’re running from Point A to a very specific Point B with a timer looming above our heads. Well, really, Point A to B to C, because at B I’ll find the man who murdered us, and that’s not an appointment one ought to miss. Do you see, Chekov? Do you see how very close we are to snapping at the slightest provocation- the most minute of nuisances?”

Chekov has that Starfleet spark- that Command flare John has witnessed from Jim Kirk, that daredevil conviction that the only right option is to go down with his teeth bared in defiance. But in Chekov that part of him is, in the end, only a spark, where in Kirk it is a storm.

“A gold star for the golden boy, to be affixed to his golden shirt,” Sherlock says dryly when Chekov, groaning in despair in Russian, finally lobs him his phaser. “Now, do you promise to behave?”

“Superhuman and you’ve still got no tact.” John scowls. “I promise he’s worth saving, Chekov. He’s only horrid _most_ of the time.”

\---

The shortest path to the warp room demands that they retake the halls past John’s cell. Alternating between bickering, seething, and John’s hand brushing against Sherlock’s (the free one not holding his gleaming sword) for the briefest of seconds, the trio slinks back the way they came.

“Doctor, be careful. By now zhey will have found you are missing. Zhey might have staked out your cell,” Chekov whispers in the hall that John can, at least, recognize as the one preceding it.

For the most fleeting of seconds, Sherlock pauses- has he heard something? But his eyes are roving and his lips are sealed tight and he’d say something if anything was wrong, never could keep his mouth shut-

Wordlessly, he tugs John back and shoves Chekov out around the corner.

Chekov squeaks but doesn’t dare defy the Augment, or the weapons he knows are pointed at his back should he hesitate..

“Wait,” Sherlock mouths to John and his obvious consternation.

“But-”

Sherlock hushes him and twines their fingers together- an honest expression of reciprocated affections, or a stroke of calculation, because he knows by now that every protest John might have will melt on contact?

It doesn’t matter. It’s working. John squeezes back and believes the implied assurance that Chekov is in the clear-

“Pavel, what the hell are you doing? You shouldn’t be alone!”

Bones.

John’s blood runs cold.

“I am- I only-” He hears Chekov stammer.

Sherlock knew. Sherlock heard someone and maybe he didn’t know it was Bones- how would he know Bones? Why would he care?- but he purposely shoved Chekov out front to serve as a decoy. He’s shifting slightly against John, hand slipping free, and he’s reaching for the pistol-

John rushes around the corner before Sherlock can snap to action. “Bones!”

“John?” Bones is standing on the threshold of John’s former hollow prison. The door is ajar- he’d been looking, assuming the worst.

It’s instinct, along with Bones’ rising antagonism that makes John reach for his phaser. With a resounding click of his heels- always one for making an entrance- Sherlock steps calmly behind John and directly into Bones’ line of sight.

Bones hisses out a string of expletives, putting what he thinks are two and two together. though Chekov remains a complication- he hasn’t heard about Chekov playing hostage-

“In ten words or less- _what the fuck is going on_?”

This is it. This is that worst-case scenario John had wanted to avoid. One of them, at least, because really it’s all John could think of during these last three days. Bones was an unexpected hurdle. John had not wanted to like anyone and then there was the Enterprise’s CMO, with his whiskey and his honesty and his willingness to believe. “Bones, please-”

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Don’t raise your voice. I don’t want to do anything but if you try to stop us-”

“He’s a deranged _murderer_ , John, not your goddamn _boyfriend_ -”

The sound of snapping metal echoes through the halls. Sherlock’s gun is cocked and aimed at Bones’ heart.

“Sherlock,” John hisses through clenched teeth, “don’t-”

“Get back into the cell. Now.” Sherlock orders, not taking his eyes off Bones.

Bones pauses, staring right back at Sherlock without the terror John has witnessed from the rest of the crew. “Pavel, where is your gun?”

“Doctor McCoy, zhey are not bad people-”

“Ensign, I’m ordering you to draw your weapon!”

Another crack in Chekov’s barely held affectations. John intercedes.

“Chekov, run ahead. We won’t hurt Bones, I swear.”

Too mortified, too implicated, and nearly tripping over his own feet, Chekov sprints out.

“Bones, I’m sorry, but I need you to get into the cell.”

Another pause. “I thought we were friends, John.”

“We _are_ -”

Bones laughs.

He can sense Sherlock fidgeting impatiently behind him- but no, he won’t harm Bones, he’s the last person he wants lying cold on the floor.

“Please, Bones-”

“Don’t fucking say ‘please’ when you’re aiming a gun at me, John, it’s crass.”

The sheer _loathing_ \- it makes John’s stomach turn.

His gun drops slightly. He can’t do it- won’t do it- but he has to, for Sherlock, he has to, and it has to be him and not Sherlock firing the gun because Bones is his responsibility-

But the doctor sighs and takes a few steps back of his own will, crossing the threshold into John’s old, barren room with the broken chair. “Leave.”

“I’m sorry-”

“Just go.”

Sherlock quickly shuts and locks the cell door. John stares at Bones for a moment, but the doctor is sitting on the cot with his head in his hands. Slowly, slowly, John breaks his gaze from his friend and turns to his partner.

But Sherlock hasn’t noticed- why should he? Why would he care about any of John’s relationships? He never has before and John suspects that being Augmented hasn’t made him any more human. John wants to demand that Sherlock say something, that he ask why this in particular was so hard for John, because John is fit for bursting- but Sherlock’s gaze is fixed on a security camera at the end of the hallway. John’s eyes narrow - _the camera is moving_.

“Got him.”

The hunters turn, back in their element again- and then there is Spock, and the unmistakable burning whistle of a phaser preparing to fire.

“He’s a Vulcan. Sly as cats, if they choose to be,” Sherlock answers John before he can ask why he didn’t discern his approach.

“You show your true colors, Doctor Watson,” Spock says, as evenly and as measured as his steps, methodically closing the distance. “Doctor McCoy. Have you been harmed?”

“Of course not-” John begins exasperatedly.

“Silence. Doctor McCoy?”

“I’m fine,” Bones grumbles, lingering by the glass. “Now hurry up and take the bastard out.”

Sherlock? Or John?

Sherlock doesn’t wait to find out. He’s charging at Spock, vicious crystal blade swinging in his right hand, gold-filigreed pistol poised to strike in his left. He’s a dark blur, all of his Augment’s agility in play, and for a moment John thinks this is it, it will end with a single blow because Spock isn’t wearing armor and Sherlock is an armed knight-

“Don’t kill him!” John shouts, but there was no need. Spock dodges and immediately counters Sherlock’s pistol with his phaser. Two jets of light meet and erupt, blowing back both combatants.

His great-great-great-grandson, John remembers. Spock is Sherlock’s sometime-grandson and he can see it now, the willowiness of their figures, the curvature of the bone just below their jaws. Even something in the way Sherlock’s fingers taper has lingered long enough to pass to Spock and they even move the same, snarl the same, glower and curse. Does Sherlock know? Can he sense it in the peculiar alignment of Spock’s being, even diluted by his Vulcan blood?

No human could decide so quickly, move so instantly. No human could have matched Sherlock’s ferociousness as well as Spock. He’s keeping his distance, just out of range of Sherlock’s blade, crackling and whizzing through the air. The blade can deflect bolts from the phaser- Sherlock discovers it quickly and presses his advantage.

“Come, now- Spock, was it?” Sherlock asks like syrup, punctuating the severity of the humming from his blade, the dueling guns that match blast for blast. “You don’t like me. You and your Captain would like me off your ship as soon as possible-” Momentary pause to duck beneath a punch. “-and to be frank, there’s nothing I want more in this universe. I can make it easy for you, Spock. Let us walk free.”

Spock miscalculates and the sword draws blood, nipping through his left sleeve. He flinches just like Sherlock-

“There are certainly traitors on this ship, but I am not one of them,” Spock replies. Another blast- and then Sherlock is careening away, gnashing his teeth with vehemence. Spock’s shot him at point-blank range, burned a charring, smoking hole in the middle of his abdomen.

“Sherlock!” John shouts again because for a moment- and maybe it’s only a trick of the light- Sherlock seems almost bestial. Carnivorous- and Sherlock has Spock pressed against a wall with the pistol in his stomach and the vorpal blade at his throat and he’s kicking Spock’s phaser towards John.

“Kill me if you dare,” Spock hisses as the edge breaks his skin, “and have the blood of one of the last of a dying species on your hands as well.”

John can overlook murder but not this, not filicide, parricide- But would Sherlock actually care if he knew the truth?

“Don’t!” John warns again, and Spock’s watching him in harrowed confusion. They didn’t come here to assassinate the officers of the Enterprise, and he’ll not leave a trail of bodies behind him. And it’s something to look back and know that when Sherlock was lost to him, disappeared within the fury of Khan Noonien Singh, a little part of him had been nearby all this time. Throughout all the uncertainty of the universe, Sherlock has survived, and through a cold-blooded officer on a starship- but a man all the same. That’s all John wants- that’s why he’s here with a gun in his hand, one strapped to his waist, and another underfoot. He won’t watch it be destroyed.

Sherlock stares John down with serpents’ eyes. Striking sideways with his gun, he renders Spock unconscious and lets him crumple to the floor.

“Not dead,” he says, when John looks petrified.

“Jesus Christ,” Bones whispers, and John jumps- he’s forgotten all about him. And he’s looking at John as if they’ve never met.

“Let’s go.” John’s the one who insists that they keep moving. Sherlock needs no urging. They find Chekov no more than ten feet down the hall, wedged behind a pillar.

\-----

It takes them only moments to sprint to the surveillance room door, three corridors down and two over. Chekov whimpers but keeps up with Sherlock’s quick pace, and judging by the fearful look in the ensign’s eyes, John imagines his speed has something to do with the threat of Sherlock’s sidearm, still tinged with Spock’s blood.

When they stop outside the room, John grabs Sherlock by the arm, stilling him. “Are you- Spock, he shot-”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock replies gruffly. He parts the lapels of his coat and lifts his shirt. The skin is reddening, and the fabric is tattered, but any sign of having been injured so fiercely is gone. “Healing already.” An Augment’s blessing.

Sherlock once again manhandles Chekov’s head to be level with the scanner. In all likelihood, Moriarty has been following them during their whole ordeal, and waiting to enter would only give the madman more time to prepare. The door slides open with a rush of cold air. John drags Chekov behind him as Sherlock enters with both weapons ready.

And Moriarty- he is there, waiting, holding a gun to the back of a young man’s head. It takes John a moment but then it’s unmistakable- this is Julian, Scotty’s friend.

“The dynamic duo together again.” Moriarty’s smile is tight, gaze fluttering, one eye obscured from the bandages wrapped around his head. He’s wearing a blue Medical uniform too large for him, making his naturally smaller frame seem even more slight. Where is his red yeoman’s tunic? Crumpled up into a ball in the corner of the sickbay from where he had prematurely escaped, his own blood clotting in the seams?

John shuts the door behind him, the decisive click of the lock resounding.

“Yeoman Brook?” Chekov asks tentatively.

“Yes, yes, connect the dots, my darling,” Moriarty replies. “John’s not quite off his rocker after all. And oh, you ought to look at John now. He’s practically glowing. The pair of them, together at last! How romantic… Just when you thought they’d never reunite-”

“There’s no point in holding a hostage,” Sherlock interrupts, nodding towards the petrified Starfleet officer locked in Moriarty’s grip.

“No great loss either,” the demon replies. “Now, following protocol- what do they usually say? ‘Take one step closer and I’ll blast his brains to bits’?”

“You assume I care whether he lives or dies.”

“We’ve been down this road before, my dear, and if I remember correctly, you’re quite a sucker for that sort of thing. And no, Johnny, we’re not talking about the time I dabbled with detonation.”  

“What does he mean?” John asks.

“The last time you saw me,” Sherlock says, with the weariness of two hundred years, “Moriarty had informed me that he had you, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson ready to be assassinated if I didn’t jump off that roof. And I jumped, and here we are today.”

John-without-a-gun would have sputtered, demanded an explanation, railed at him for an idiocy that is two hundred years gone, but the stillness of the room and the weight of the weapon in his hand grounds him. He accepts the information, processes it. Guilt has another time and place.

“I always forget, Johnny. It’s so recent for you, isn’t it? Did I even allow you breath to grieve?”

“Enough! Let the officer go,” Sherlock says with the edge of a growl.

“Do you like his new hair, Johnny? I was so sick of that curly mop he insisted on toting around. Cost me extra to have Stamford strip him bare and transplant better follicles, but, well- as you can see, it’s practically paying for itself.” His lecherous grin gleams oddly in the wake of the icy blue light from the surveillance screens.

“Are you quite finished?” Sherlock asks coldly.

“I wish you had been there, Johnny!” Moriarty exclaims, reveling in having drawn a response, no matter how masked, from Sherlock. “To see him strapped down to a table, needles in his arms, metal drilled into his skull, my little _soldier_ in the making-”

A shot from the golden pistol- Chekov shrieks as Julian of the Occipital Lobe suddenly slumps before Moriarty. Blood trickles down his brow from a neat hole in his skull, no more than half an inch wide.

And then they move, and John doesn’t have time to protest Julian’s murder.

Moriarty has two phasers, one of his own and the other snatched from Julian’s corpse. He’s firing haphazardly, and lets out a cackle when John barely ducks in time and smells his hair singeing. Sherlock is a shadow again, moving swiftly, only revealed by the dim glow of the screens.

“Hide!” John barks at Chekov, and from the distraction, he is rendered helpless as Moriarty shoots Sherlock’s pistol out of his hands.

A sword against two guns means limited range- until Sherlock realizes he can bat Moriarty’s shots back at him. It’s a one-sided volley of flashes of deadly light, with the psychopath ducking and dodging in the dark.

But he’s tiring- John can sense it. The blood loss, the sedatives Bones must have pumped into his system when he surgically reattached his ear- as emotionally defunct as Moriarty may be, his body is betraying him.

When there is an opening, and without Sherlock’s prompting, John begins firing, catching Moriarty in the wrist and forcing him to drop a gun. Another shot to the thigh, and the man who so loved his Westwood suits stumbles. The speed and accuracy of his shots seem to stun the madman; for all his teasing, did he really forget that John had been a soldier?

“Drop it,” John says as he and Sherlock corner him.

Moriarty only cackles in response. But for all his bravado, he’s squirming, trying to stop the bleeding in his thigh as well as in his wrist, but having no luck with either.

“Never thought it would end like this, boys, I’ll grant you that. I imagined myself doomed to die peacefully in my sleep, given it’s the last thing I want. Admittedly, I’ve always wanted my death to involve some manner of erotic asphyxiation and silk handkerchiefs but this- this isn’t bad. Oh, to be carried off on a starship!” he sighs mawkishly.

Sherlock’s voice behind him betrays anger. “John, let me -”

“No.” Quietly and authoritatively, John cuts him off. “No. This man has fucked up my life too many times and in too many ways. I _deserve_ to kill him.”

Silence. Even Chekov’s frantic breathing has slowed.

John kneels to Moriarty’s level, still pointing the gun at his forehead. He forces himself to look the madman in the eye, forces himself not to shoot.

“You don’t like pain, do you, Jim? You managed to keep a bubble around yourself while we were in London; even here on the ship our little bumps haven’t bothered you too much. But your ear… that _hurt_ today, didn’t it? The ripping of flesh, the sharpness so close, the loss of a sense, if only for a moment - that _hurt_ you.”

Moriarty’s defiant expression flickers. This is not the John they know.

“You remember that I’m a doctor, don’t you, Jim? I’ve studied anatomy for over a decade, I’ve seen it in diagrams and _in the flesh_. I know where you hurt, and I know how to hurt you. That pain in your leg… it’s the most sensitive part of your sartorius muscle disintegrating. Do you feel the snapping fibers? Do you feel the tearing skin surrounding it?”

Moriarty, the bastard- he smiles invitingly and licks his lips.

“Your wrist… I’ll admit, I mostly shot there to make you drop your gun, and yet - you can tell me if what I’m saying is inaccurate - I expect I wounded the tendon of your extensor pollicus longus? Shattered your trapezoid bone? Oh, of course, you probably don’t care much for proper medical terminology, but I’ve found it always gives _me_ comfort if I can name the pain. Does it feel twisted? Agonizing despite its size?”

Something inside John himself is breaking, but it’s not a muscle or a bone that he can name. It’s the last shred of regard for Moriarty as a human being. The man is turning into an insect right before his eyes.

“No, Jim. I won’t end it with a quick bullet through the brain. I won’t shoot your stomach and let you bleed out quickly. You see, I want you to _feel_ the pain. Really experience it for what it is - your body breaking into a million pieces. I want every part of you to burn with anguish, every cell in your body to tear raggedly in half, I want you to beg me for mercy and know full well that no mercy will ever be granted to you. Because, Jim- isn’t that just what you wanted to do to me?”

John throws his gun aside and lifts up the shuddering, paling body, forcing him to walk backwards, shoving him against the wall of screens behind him that show empty, white corridors.

“Ask me, Jim. Ask me not to.”

A last Cheshire grin. “Go fuck yourself.”

And John sinks his fist into Moriarty’s stomach. He strikes again and again and when Moriarty tries to slump- the liar, the cheater, the fake, John knows he isn’t dead _just_ yet- he beats him across the face. The sickening crack of a broken nose, the dislocation- _twice_ \- of his jaw-

John feels every inch of himself turning into a weapon, each part of his own body perfectly matched to destroy each part of Moriarty’s.

He keeps the man on the brink of consciousness. He twists the torn wrist to to waken him, digs his knee into the bullet wound of his thigh. Screens shatter in John’s wake and Moriarty is still _laughing_ \- is he possessed? Does his blackened soul stubbornly linger-

There’s one blow left. Everyone in the room knows it. And John pauses, realizing his own bruised fists, his labored breathing.

“Do it,” Moriarty groans in the throes of his death rattle. He coughs, blood spilling down his shirt, down John’s front. “Do it, Doctor Watson.”

“Any last words?” John hears himself say.

“Only the sweetest.” His body convulses, flinching involuntarily in John’s presence, and in the midst of his tremors, he turns his reddened gaze to Sherlock. “I love you, my darling. And I’ll see you in hell.”

There are shards of glass beside them, ruined screens like bereft, ghostly frames hanging by their wires against the walls. John wraps his right hand in his Starfleet sleeve and selects the largest shard, one that fits him like a knife, and slowly, methodically, slides it between Moriarty’s ribs and into his heart, piercing it with care. Moriarty screams- human after all? And then he is still.

John stands, covered in glass and blood, surveying his work. Delicately, Sherlock traverses the destruction, placing a steady hand on his shoulder.

“That felt good, didn’t it?” he asks quietly.

“You have no idea.”

Alarms blare. The screens, all portraying the pallid labyrinth that is the Enterprise, flash red. Hordes of officers cross their vision. They must have found Bones and Spock.

“We have to go,” Sherlock says, dragging out a shaking, cursing Chekov from under a desk in the corner, the furthest distance possible from Moriarty’s corpse.

“You understand why I did it, don’t you?” John asks Chekov sharply as they sprint out of the surveillance room and finally, direct their bearings towards the warp room. “Chekov?”

“Yes, yes,” the young officer blurts out, and refuses to say any more. He’s probably thinking about Julian.

John worries- he could compromise everything. But when a troop of twelve security guards spot them and attack, the ensign obediently retreats into a corner, his only act of rebellion being to shut his eyes and clamp his hands over his ears as Sherlock, bounding off the walls and leaping with the grace of an acrobat, disarms them all and under John’s demand, leaves them in an unconscious pile on the floor.

\---

“Zhere it is!” Chekov exclaims breathlessly as they round sharply into the next hallway.

A few yards away, at the end of the vaulted, porcelain-plated corridor, is the translucent door to the transport room. They close the distance in seconds- John, for once, taking the lead, spurred on by fleeting fragments of the day he was first blasted onto the Enterprise, when everything was blinding and gold, Kirk emerging from the haze. Sherlock bites the wind a breath behind him; Chekov struggles a few paces beyond.

“Here, here, here!” Chekov babbles as they burst in.

The glass-encased platform beneath the transporter beams dominates the room. John takes quick inventory of equipment he hardly remembers- sleek computers, a towering, softly whirring generator, and-

“Scotty!” Chekov starts back in dismay as the engineer, gun arm wavering ever so slightly, sets his crosshairs on Sherlock.

“Pavel?” Scotty whispers uncertainly. “...Watson?”

In a panic, Chekov visibly shrinks before them, hand flying to his hip, to the gun he no longer carries thanks to Sherlock’s foresight.

“Scotty-” John begins as calmly as he can, hands raised in a scant offering of peace.

“Chekov!” Scotty barks, because he’s found himself in a room full of strangers, and the one person left who he might trust is refusing to look him in the eye. He’s paralyzed with the sight of the Augment who brought Starfleet and his captain so much anguish, who stands motionless now, head tilted ever so slightly like a hellish doll, gaze inscrutable and unfeeling. And then his gaze flickers to John. “What’s going on, Watson?” he asks, so audibly pained that John flinches with guilt. “This whole time-”

“It’s complicated.”

“It must be, because I can’t cipher out a single piece of it.”

“Scotty-”

“We let you in!” Scotty cries, gun shaking in his tremulous grip. He’s a mathematician, not a fighter, and he’s staring down pale, dark-haired death. “Most of the crew who know you’re here think it’s a pile of crap, you warping into our future. But I believed you. Took me a bit of convincing from Bones, but it made sense. And I pitied you. Shipwrecked. That’s what you were- what we _thought_ you were.”

“I am! That part was never a lie.”

“We gave you a home. We gave you a ticket onto the _Enterprise_. And look what you’ve done with it! Nearly murdered a senior Yeoman, agitated our Captain- I don’t even want to think about how many innocent lives you took down to get to this room. And for what? For _him_?” He jabs his gun at Sherlock. “Was Sulu right all along then, Watson? Because from where I’m standing, breaking out your partner here looks like it was your plan from the start.”

That’s true, to some extent, and it’s maddening, because John can’t say that, can’t give an inch, but he knows he betrayed them and all their hospitality, but it was all for the best- “Please,” is all John can say. But where to begin? “We only need a minute.”

Scotty’s throat constricts, voice cracking as he ventures, “For what?”

Empty gestures. Empty words-

“He’s- he’s not who you think he is.” Same old track. Broken record- Moriarty is dead, dead on the floor and he can’t feel anything, not the joy or the relief he expected and-

“Chekov- Watson- come away from him,” the engineer demands in his bewilderment, still refusing to lower his gun.

“Scotty,” John pleads, “you know I’m not from here. Neither is he! He was kidnapped and Augmented. It’s not his fault-” And they are so _close_ and Moriarty is dead-

“Don’t you realize, Watson? It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter what he was, or who he used to be- it doesn’t take away from what he’s done. The thousands he’s murdered. And he has to answer for that!”

It’s true but he can’t let it be true, facts are facts, but he can’t give an inch but _Julian is dead_ -

“This. Is. Tiresome,” Sherlock intones darkly.

Visibly, Scotty shudders. Chekov’s eyes are trained to his feet. Scotty beckons again insistently to Chekov, who for a moment looks as if he might run to him and John wouldn’t blame him- but Sherlock doesn’t miss a beat in snapping the barrel of his gun to the young navigator’s head.

“Watson!” Scotty’s desperation rises. “Stop this! Whatever connection you have to this man- don’t take us down with you. Don’t take Pavel.”

Helplessly, John looks to Chekov, frozen with confusion and fright- he’s a navigator, a scholar, not a fighter- and then to Sherlock, glowering impatiently. Murderously. It chills John to the bone. “Don’t hurt him,” he says, because he knows too well what thoughts are emerging behind that look.

Sherlock sighs loudly. “The lengths I go for you, John.” He lunges, a dark blur too fast for the eye to follow, and a second later, Scotty’s body thuds to the floor.

“No!” Chekov shrieks, clawing at John’s sleeves. “Doctor Watson, you promised, you said you wouldn’t-”

Sick to his stomach, John wrestles the frantic navigator’s arms behind his back, pinning them there, then forces him to the floor when he attempts to break free. “Sherlock-”

“He’s alive,” Sherlock snaps irately, dragging a limp Scotty by his collar and tossing him out the door.

Now turned loose, Chekov, prattling distraughtly in Russian, checks the unconscious engineer’s vitals and props him up into a more dignified position against the wall.

“Not very useful, is he?” Sherlock mutters to John. “Come on, now.” He nudges John towards the transporter before he can protest.

“The door.” John balks in his nausea. Scotty was right but there’s no time to be right- “They’ll be on us in seconds.”

“Seconds are all we need.” But his eyes are roving, rapidly calculating the distances of the halls, the paths the Enterprise’s captain will be sure to take.

Moments, all they have are moments-

“You’ve never done this before,” John realizes. “You’ve never warped through time!”

“Very few have, John,” Sherlock replies shortly as his fingers dance over the keys of the control panel by the platform.

“There’s not enough time,” John says through gritted teeth. “I can hold the door-”

“Against their phasers? Their clearance codes? It’s a glass door, and however you attempt to lock it, they’ll find a way to override it.”

“I can try-”

“Yes, John, tell me how all of your three days aboard this ship have educated you on the mechanics of a technology two hundred years ahead of your time.” Sherlock’s typing more furiously now, shaking his head and mumbling incomprehensibly under his breath.

He’s afraid, and it makes him scathing. Anxiety crackles and hums. John’s lived with him long enough to sense when something is amiss, when it’s one of those rare moments when the detective succumbs, however reluctantly, to his own distress. He’s distressed because he isn’t sure, because for once, there is something he doesn’t simply _know_ -

The glass door swings shut. Invisible gears whir- a lock clicks.

“He’s finally come ‘round,” Sherlock murmurs distractedly.

On the other side of the door, Chekov’s fiddling with something on the wall that John can’t see.

“Doctor Watson,” the navigator calls, voice muffled, as he lets his hand fall shakily to his side. “I-”

“-coded it shut,” Sherlock finishes, attention still fixed to the long, complicated string of coordinates on his screen. “He’s a clever child, I’ll give him that. Even Kirk will have his hands full trying to sort out what he’s done.”

“Chekov…”

Somehow, he looks even younger, with the way his red-rimmed eyes watch them accusingly through the glass. “I believe you,” he bursts out suddenly. “I believe zat is was not your fault zat all zhose people died. It was not you, only zhe monster zhey created. But I am of Starfleet, and zhis is already more zhan I should have dared.”

“Thank you,” John says, and for the last time he is overwhelmed with the young officer’s alacrity. Anything John can do or say will be entirely inadequate. He cannot repay Chekov for his kindness, his honesty, his absolute readiness to take John’s word as truth.

It strikes John then, that Chekov has nothing to define him but Starfleet. There is nothing for him in his life aside from engineering and navigation and stars, and officers twice as old and half as exuberant. Yet they are his, and where he belongs. For all his frustration, John can’t blame him for his indecisiveness, the paranoia that trailed his every step after breaking him out of his cell. He’s sorry for dragging him here, for hurting Scotty and all the officers before him. But it had to be done. John tells himself this as he tries to apologize but can’t seem to find the right words. It all had to be done-

“Done!” Sherlock shouts triumphantly, just as the furious thundering of footsteps echoes down the hall.

There’s a flash of light. John double takes- and Chekov crumples to the ground.

John shouts his name, rushing to the glass, and comes face-to-face with a murderous-looking Kirk.

“John!” Sherlock’s leapt onto the platform, pacing back and forth in quick-fire inspection.

“Open the door!” Kirk orders. His phaser, tightly fisted at his side, glows with a reddening intensity “Open the fucking door!” He slams his fist against the glass when John does not comply.

“Open it yourself,” John replies flatly, gaze flickering to the prone body of the only officer who knows how.

Scotty stirs; Bones shoves his way through red-shirted officers to the front and is at his side immediately. John can’t bear to look him in the eye- it would be too stark, too honest-

“He’s alright, Jim,” Bones decides as his instruments, whirring and pinging, scan the groaning man holding his head.

“Scotty, unlock the door,” Kirk orders as the engineer struggles to his feet.

“Jesus, Jim.” Bones frowns, discontented with the way his recently fallen patient is being treated. “He’s hardly conscious-”

“Scotty,” Kirk repeats testily as his eyes bore into John’s.

“On it, Captain.” Scotty’s fingers fly over the panel, teasing out Chekov’s work, which only leave him shaking his head in frustration.

“John, what are you waiting for?” Sherlock calls.

John steals a glance over his shoulder; the detective is still busily buzzing to and fro, etching at the wiring embedded into the floor panels, picking at the lasers.

Sherlock’s still afraid. Still unsure. Relying too much on luck.  

“I’m sorry,” John says to Kirk. To Bones, now kneeling over Chekov and muttering hotly with disgust; to Uhura, hustling to the front to tenderly brush the navigator’s hair from his face; to Scotty, struggling to obey his captain and failing. To Chekov, for causing him so much strife. To whoever had to shoot the poor boy because orders are orders.

There’s a zap and a curse behind him. The sound of something crackling hotly. Sherlock has pried off a panel and is braiding the wires. Calculations flutter under his breath.

“I didn’t want this, any of this.” John’s stepping away from the glass. There’s a volley of lasers, but the shots dissipate against the very barricade designed to do just that. “It wasn’t his fault,” he says, even as he knows they’ll never really understand. “He’s Sherlock. My Sherlock. He didn’t know.”

“Watson!” Kirk’s pounding on the glass in his fury. Hard of hearing or refusing to listen? “Watson!”

“Captain-” Spock’s here now. From his scathing glance at Chekov, it seems he’s deduced who coded the door shut. Maybe he shot Chekov himself.

Kirk and Spock begin arguing furiously; Bones has hauled Chekov away. Uhura is railing at Scotty in Kirk’s place-

“John, John- almost done. Almost done-”

Sherlock isn’t facing John, whose arms hang limply at his sides. He’s too consumed with the sizzling red and green cables, with stomping the uprooted panels back into place.

Almost done-

“John Watson, if you step onto that warp you will be branded as an enemy of the Federation. I will personally hunt you from galaxy to galaxy and drag you back to Earth to be tried for treason. Right after that bastard beside you.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Yet John is without malice, without hatred- the challenge issues into the air, its unnatural complacency only infuriating Kirk further.

Kirk is barking orders left and right- does Scotty know if they can climb through the vents? Tear down a wall? Take a cannon to the door and blast it to ash? And if Sherlock and John are taken with it so much the better-

“Hurry now, John,” Sherlock says, even as he’s still preoccupied with adjusting and extending the lasers’ arms.

For all their rage and their threats, Kirk and his crew dim into a garbled rabble. What matters here is Sherlock; here and now there is only John and Sherlock and John would do well to remember that, even with a horde of red and blue and gold at their door, to hold it for as long as-

“The captain’s first officer has ordered your doctor to revitalize the programmer at all costs. They’ll have given him two hyposprays already. Twenty seconds more and he’ll be coherent. Say your goodbyes and we’ll be off. Home. We’ll be home- ”

John, whose hand has been lingering over the control panel, tracing the string of numbers and foreign ideographs that are incomprehensible to him but promise so much- oh, so very much- takes a breath.

And presses the only button.

The glass door surrounding the warp panel slides shut. In quick succession, five locks click into place.

Sherlock whirls around at the sound, but even with his magnified abilities, he finds himself trapped once more behind glass.

Rage flares- and when he sees there’s nothing, no one, only John- it melts. “John?” he calls, plaintively, suppliantly, palms pressed flat against the glass. A series of expressions flit across his face, a storm swelling and breaking and bubbling and bursting- “John?” he asks softly, because he wants to believe it’s an imposter who’s imprisoned him, who’s turned on him at the very last moment. It’s the only logical explanation, the only possibility in this universe. “John…”

And John cannot help his heart from breaking. This- _this_ is betrayal. “I’m sorry,” he says, because he will never finish apologizing.

“Why are you sorry?”

Sherlock, asking why, and asking John, of all people- it makes him laugh, short and bitter.

“Let me out,” Sherlock says when John can only shake his head, speech falling flat from the lump forming in his throat. “John!” Dominance surging. Anger stirring.

“No.”

“John. Open the door. _Now_.”

John thinks of Kirk just beyond, wanting the same, and laughs again.

“Why are you doing this?”

Slowly, steadily, steps weighed down as if tied to stones, John ascends the remaining ledge of the platform and presses one of his hands to the glass, over one of Sherlock’s own.

“John. Why?”

“Because I’m dying.” A heartbeat lost. “And because I love you.” He doesn’t waste time. On another day, in another place, he waits, hopes he isn’t alone. But this isn’t London. “The warp,” he goes on. “The first one, the one Moriarty used to drop me here. It damaged something, made all my cells and muscles deteriorate. I’ve been coughing blood. Bones noticed, ran some tests. I’ve been dying since the moment I arrived. Oh, don't look at me that way.”

“But-”

“You must have known it all along! There’s no way you didn’t. You and that beautiful mind of yours.”

“John-” Sherlock’s hand trembles, presses ever harder against the glass as if he might permeate it and hold him. Does he feel the same way? Doesn’t matter. “John-”

Perhaps Sherlock hadn’t known that their individual decisions would lead them here. But he must have speculated, then hoped otherwise, for once choosing to deny the truth in favor of a fantasy.

“If I get in that warp with you I’m not going to make it. I’ll disintegrate the second we land. But here- if I stay here, Bones promised me- there’s a chance, you see? Their medical technology is so much more advanced than ours. If I stay I have a shot at surviving. But you- you’re an Augment. You can take the warp on your own. You’ll be fine.”

“Not on my own,” Sherlock replies, shaking his head frantically as if, out of sheer will, he might dispel the possibility. “No- you and I- you have to come with me! You’ll be alright. We’ll find a way. _I’ll_ find a way. Please- not now. Please. Don’t leave me now- John! _John_!”

Hollow. John is hollow when he tears his hand away from the glass, from Sherlock, his partner, his best friend, his- well, nothing more. Can't ever be more, not after today, or tomorrow, or ever upon ever because-

Tears prick the corners of his eyes. He chases them away.

“John!” Sherlock’s slamming on the glass with his fists, then barreling into it shoulder-first with all the strength he can muster, causing it to shudder. Gales against windows, a tempest upon panes-

It doesn’t shatter. John knew it wouldn’t.

“Open the door!” Sherlock howls, joining the chorus of Kirk and his crew. “John! You’re not doing this. You’re not-”

“I am.”

“You can’t do this to me. Alone- I was so alone. I remember everything- all those years without you. Every moment, knowing I was alive, no longer human, and that you were long dead and gone- I feel them now. Don’t condemn me to that again. Please. John, I’m begging you. Don’t send me away- let me out. We can fight, take one of the escape pods. Anything but this.”

“It won’t work. You know that. There’s too many of them.”

“Moriarty had plans to take the Enterprise.”

“But not alone. He was going to wake your- I mean, Khan’s crew.”

“My crew-” Sherlock inhales sharply. “Khan’s, yes, but also mine.”

“You care for them?”

Sherlock doesn’t dare reply.

“I’ll stay and convince Kirk to release them. I won’t let him hide them away in stasis. You see? It’s- it’s all for the best. This is the best we can do.”

“Damn them, John.” He’s crying now without any real malice and John can’t look at him, not like this. John’s never seen him cry before and it burns him to his core.

“You’re going on, Sherlock. Without me. You’re going to find Irene and be with her and one day, far down the line, there will be Spock. He’s half human and he traced his genealogy all the way back to you. He said so himself. Vulcans don’t lie. Kirk and the Enterprise need their First Officer.”

“Adler?” Sherlock blinks furiously in confusion.

“You’ve got so much more living to do. It’s practically written.” Blitheness turned almost scathing. Hollow. He must remain hollow-

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want Irene, I want-” But Sherlock, crying in earnest, freezes as he comes upon the crux of all cases, the truth that blindsides him, one he cannot refute. “You’ve made up your mind.” And there is nothing he can do.

“From the moment we entered the room.” The coordinates are waiting. The cursor at the end blinks insistently.

“Don’t,” Sherlock cries out as John’s hand hovers over the panel. “Don’t you dare. John- John- Don’t, I said _don’t_ -!” He’s fighting against the glass once more and screaming and pleading and John is hollow, hollow, hollow-

“Kill Mike Stamford for me if you see him, will you?”

As John enters the command to activate the warp, he wonders if Sherlock, Augmented, will live forever. There's a moment- one perfect, blissful moment where his scream turns soundless and he is dark, haunted, inhumanely statuesque, Azrael threatening to detonate, a clawed Sidhe ascending from the deep-

_“Do you think I’ll ever meet your parents?”_

_“Parents?” Astonishment. “Why would you ever want to do that?” Still fiddling with a worn tobacco pipe. His grandfather’s, he said, and its recent discovery during the liquidation of one of the late Holmes’ properties had prompted a correspondence with his mother and father. It had been a piddling affair._

_“I don’t know.” Uncomfortable shifting. The groan of leather cushions. “Seems like the natural thing to do.”_

_“Natural.” Finger tracing the elegantly curved neck, pausing ever so slightly over the nicks and scratches._

_“We_ have _been living together for quite some time. I’m sure they’re at least a little curious about who their darling son’s shacked up with.”_

_Flickering eyes. Uncertainty. Calculating- yes, humor, John’s projecting humor-_

_“It’s better if you don’t.” Decisively tucks away the pipe into his pocket._

_Mycroft doesn’t really like John; has never really liked John. Thinks he’s too simple, too common. Too unexceptional to be the companion of a Holmes. John senses it every time they meet. A certain curl of the lip; the occasional undisguised sneer, because what in the world can an ant like John Watson do against Mycroft Holmes? Maybe his parents are the same. Maybe they too bleed Holmes arrogance, that insufferable snobbery. Maybe Sherlock is ashamed-_

_For the briefest of moments, Sherlock’s hand closes over John’s. It’s back in his pocket a moment later, presumably picking at the pipe again. Safe._

_“It’s not you,” Sherlock says. “It’s them. I walked away from them for a reason. I won’t bring you into that toxicity.” Plucks his violin and bow from their stand, traverses to the window. Safe, safe. “I much prefer it this way. Simpler, don’t you think? When it’s just you and I.”_

Did he do the right thing?

_“Do you know what a dream is, John?”_

John unhooks the gun from his waist and places it calmly on the control panel.

 _“A sliver of this, a piece of that, the fragment of that one Sunday afternoon in May when your mother took you to the park and the red of the handlebars of your bike- that very cherry red, chipped in so many places like clubs and spades- stuck out to you and you never quite forgot it. The fraction of the night Annette took me to the opera when I was seven and_ Gianni Schicchi _unfolded upon the stage, and I knew something before my eyes was beautiful, although I didn’t yet possess the words to convey it, and when I went home all I could think of was the dust upon the conductor’s lapels. The dent in the bell of the lead french horn and how it marbled the light. A dream takes all of those things you once thought so insignificant and brings them to the forefront of a place where you can’t ignore them.”_

_“A bit like deduction, isn’t it?”_

He raises his hands above his head, and as he slowly turns, the door shatters.

Starfleet pours in.

 ****  



	7. Anagnorisis

_In nature there's no blemish but the mind._

_None can be called deformed but the unkind._

When Sherlock returns to London, it is winter.

He knows it is winter because the air that creeps up the landing and slips beneath the door into their flat carries that particular brisk mustiness, that scent of pebbled, blackened, churning snow. He knows he is in his flat because his left cheekbone is pressed against the charred little patch he’d burned into the rug once with a hot poker that vaguely resembles an anatomical heart- John had pointed it out after he was done being cross- and-

_John._

Sherlock snaps to his feet. His muscles groan in protest- but it’s a twinge, just a twinge. He’s an Augment, after all. He can already feel the strain receding, trickling swiftly away like sand through his fingers.

But nevermind that. Pain is nothing. Pain is in the mind. He has learned to live through pain and besides, the stiffness lingering in his spine- he’ll probably feel this until tomorrow- is nothing compared to the crippling knowledge that John Watson, his John, is gone.

Cars honk in irritation down Marylebone Road. One swerves into Baker Street. Sherlock involuntarily begins to count the dust motes swaying idly through the shaft of light cutting through the curtains. The air is dead.

John was right. He wouldn’t have survived the warp, not in his condition. He was decaying from the inside out and attempting to leap two hundred years back in time- not to mention taking into account the great distance between 221b Baker Street and the Enterprise, hovering just beyond Neptune- would have subluxated every bone in his body. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that he could have melted into a puddle of gore on the spot.

For once, John thought things through. He discovered and executed the logical solution- the only solution- and Sherlock hates him for it. Where was John’s insufferable pathos when he actually needed it?

The dust never ends. He can’t stop counting. He stands in the middle of his livingroom, between his and John’s armchairs, for the first time feeling that the room is too cramped. He towers above all in Khan Noonien Singh’s coat, bearing the weight of the dozen pockets that have tucked away guns, knives, bombs. Arsenic in the lining. Intelligence to topple nations - and topple them he did, along with hundreds of innocent lives who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has done horrible things. Sherlock Holmes has done unspeakable things.

John only had a 12.4% chance of survival, no matter how skilled a physician Leonard McCoy was- _has_ a 12.4% chance of survival, _is_ a physician-

Five hundred seventy-eight, five hundred seventy-nine-

If you fold a thousand paper cranes you get to make one wish. That’s the story, isn’t it? Mycroft lied and told him it was two thousand to keep him busy. He made the two thousand just in case. But nothing happened when he was through- Annette didn’t return early from her summer vacation in Turkey, Mycroft didn’t stop picking on him, and his mother didn’t suddenly agree to let him transfer schools, away from the boys who had snapped his collapsible wooden chess set in two. The girl who had once lent him her bicycle didn’t move back into the cottage down the hill. Maybe he had done it wrong- maybe he wasn’t supposed to wish for so much and they had all cancelled each other out.

He’ll do it now. He’ll count all the way to two thousand. The universe owes him that much. He deserves one good thing. He deserves to have John back, whole and happy, after all they’ve been through.

Six hundred thirty-five. Six hundred thirty-six-

At six hundred eighty-nine, Sherlock remembers that there is no higher, universal power to grant him any wish, no matter how small. There’s that pathos. Counting dust is the last thing that will bring John back.

With a roar, he picks up the nearest object- a vase? A little porcelain figurine? Cool to the touch- and hurls it against the wall. It shatters but it’s not enough. He stalks to the kitchen and upends the table, turns his fury to the chairs and everything is smoldering beneath his augmented strength, cracking, splintering, the dust spiraling wild-

“Sherlock!”

Mrs. Hudson.

He turns to her, haggard and heaving, decimated furniture crushed in his fist from the pressure of his hand alone.

“Sherlock-”

He faints.

\---

Mrs. Hudson has covered him with one of her horrid crocheted afghans.

When Sherlock comes to, he is lying on his couch- the suede grits the same, even smells the same, and he must remember again that this is the twenty-first century and not the twenty-third and that is why it hasn’t turned to dust- with an army of scratchy granny squares tucked suffocatingly around his shoulders, the cobweb-like fibers irritating his chin. She’s taken the liberty of extracting him from his coat. It waits, stalwart, almost sentient, cast over a chair like a straw man propped up in a field.

She’s fussing. Mrs. Hudson is fussing, and she’s got the kettle atop the duress of an inferno and something bubbling in a pot beside it and now she’s twittering at him, worrying her corkscrew chestnut hair.

The ruined furniture has been swept away- all that remains of his wrath is the dust, the hazy, afternoon London light that lingers upon everything it touches. How long has he been out? She’s a menace with a broom and pan, so not very-

“-cold, cold as death, and don’t you look it too!”

He heaves himself upright, leaving the afghan- god, pastel never looks so atrocious as when it’s within her ministrations- in a heap. Instinctively, he reaches for his coat. His armor-

Mrs. Hudson clucks sharply in disapproval and slaps his hand away- _slaps_ , actually slaps, as if he were a child and not a man who could kill her while taking the tea she’s foisting upon him.

“It’s filthy!” she exclaims. Still talking about _his_ coat. “Don’t think I can’t smell blood. And gunpowder. And pesticides. And all of it fresh!”

“You’ve never cared before,” he croaks. “And I’ve been dripped with far worse.”

She’s sitting beside him now, tutting and clucking still over his hair- misses the curls but this cut suits him fine, something about being suave, whatever she means by that, he ought to have done it sooner and he can’t bring himself to expend the effort necessary to explain to her that he had every hair follicle torn from his scalp and replaced just to suit the perversions of a madman with millions of dollars to burn. He pointedly shifts away. She obliviously follows.

When was the last time he had been touched this way? Without hatred, without motive-

“Where in the world have you been, Sherlock?” she asks, and she’s looking at him curiously- it’s more than his hair that’s changed. He has become steel through and through and she can sense that, can’t she, with the way she’s looking at him as if he’s a ghost. “For two years, we-”

“Two hundred,” he corrects her. “I’ve been-” Could she possibly understand? Could she even begin to wrap her mind around it? “What year is it exactly?” he asks instead.

And she tells him and yes, it has been about two years since-

But she’s staring at him so intensely and she’s utterly perplexed and his head’s still too foggy to cipher out why-

“We thought you were dead!” she suddenly wails, bursting into tears.

Dead? Yes, dead, because he had _jumped_ and Moriarty and Stamford had been there with their schemes, ready to patch him back together.

“And there was a funeral, and your poor mother and father were in attendance, came all the way from Marseilles, and Gregory brought half of Scotland Yard, and your brother went right into a fit at the reception and John could hardly-”

He grabs her by the wrist, stilling her with the swiftness of the purest of purpose. “What did you just say?”

“So many came to your funeral, and not as many dry eyes as you’d expect and your brother got into the punch and decided at the end of the night to keep your flat preserved the way you left it-”

“Hang the damned funeral! Did you just say that John-”

She lets out a little shriek. He’s squeezing too hard. He forgot again- humans are little more than porcelain, their bones as brittle as glass. “I’m sorry,” he says, immediately releasing her. “But John, you said that _John_ -”

“All broken up about it, as anyone might be when their best friend decides he ought to throw himself off a hospital roof,” she sniffs, rubbing her wrist.

She’ll recover. “But you’re saying he’s alive,” he presses. “He’s still here. And alive.” Because John said that Moriarty had warped him onto the Enterprise directly after the fall and if that was the case then there would be no time to attend a funeral unless Sherlock actually-

Maybe. There’s a sliver, a glimmer that he is racing to chase, and it’s a pursuit he prolongs because if he were to hope too much, that maybe John-

“Where is he?”

She gives him an address and a fistful of bills. She’s still talking as he pulls on his coat. She goes so far as to chase him to the front door- she’s never done that before. Is she still upset about her wrist?- but he isn’t listening.

\---

The cabbie pulls to a stop in front of a modest flat- two floors, mismatched russet red bricks, neatly trimmed but weedy-looking hedges. Sherlock is somewhere in Willesden Green. John decided, for some reason, to move from Central London to a shoddy little burrow where the greatest attractions are the despondent, bandy-legged youths and a sorry rendition of Rosalind and her Orlando cast in stone, raunchily graffitied.

John being in Willesden Green is a complication. Something must have gone wrong with the warp, with Sherlock’s calculations- yes, it was what he had speculated from the beginning but he hadn’t been sure until now, until he came upon John’s rusted gate and uncannily tidy mailbox and the doormat that demands he believe it’s a ‘wonderful’ day. With every step along the snow-strewn, cobbled path to John’s new front door, Sherlock’s conviction resurfaces and strengthens- this is not his earth, not his twenty-first century, but a parallel universe. Uncommon, yes, but not unheard of. A slipped decimal, an overestimation of his figures- his coordinates had skewed ever so minutely and he had cast himself into the incorrect dimension.

It explains the odd porcelain figurine he had thrown, the chairs that had felt foreign in his hands. If Mycroft had indeed squandered thousands of pounds just to keep Mrs. Hudson complacent and hire some finnicky, trusted individual to dust the flat down every week- _preserve_ , Mrs. Hudson had said. The furniture and the figurine were his. He and John had certainly worked and lived together in this timeline but there were, of course, other aberrations. But he can handle that. Sherlock can handle the variances. John will certainly be the John he remembers- any deviation in personality, any step towards the ‘norm,’ and he wouldn’t have become Sherlock’s partner. And John is what matters.

It’s tedious to be wrong, but perhaps his errors are a blessing. He’s getting his wish- he’s going to find John whole and healthy, despite all past reason and reckoning. The paper cranes, the dust- it all comes to this.

He quickens his pace. He raps on the door.

This is it. Their second chance and Sherlock will do this right, he will be kind, he will listen, he will make sure John will realize that they ought to be together, that every sign points towards it. John will forgive him. Sherlock had jumped to protect him, after all- that much of his own universe seems to remain in this world. John will move back to Baker Street immediately, and at no great loss-

Sherlock prepares to knock again when a woman opens the door.

“Hello?” she asks. She’s still got the chain on the door and she’s peering carefully through the crack, at the pale, gaunt man in a great osprey coat.

His maid? His lesbian alcoholic sister he’s never met? “I’m looking for John Watson.”

“And you are?”

“His- friend,” Sherlock stumbles impatiently. “Sherlock Holmes.”

The door slams shut. Then plaintive, muffled- “John!”

A hurried descent down carpeted, creaking stairs. Hushed whispers- rising voices. Arguing-

“Sherlock?”

And then there is John. Ten pounds heavier, hair approximately 12.8% thinner, a permanent wrinkle set into his brow- all of it still adding up to a healthier John than the one disintegrating on the Enterprise. And again, the thought- John was right. It was better that he stayed and sent Sherlock away.

“Is it really you?” John’s still got his hand on the doorknob and he’s remaining steadfastly behind the threshold. Sherlock notices that too.

“Were you expecting an entrance with more flair?”

“I was expecting you dead.”

“Well, I-” Sherlock feels himself begin to stammer and he immediately puts an end to it- Khan Noonien Singh never allowed himself to fall to hesitation. Awkwardly, he holds out his arms- _Here I am?_ Asking to be embraced?

John purses his lips. Shifts from one foot to the other and back again.

“No, I’m not dead,” Sherlock says. “Please, John- it’s complicated. So terribly convoluted. And the thing is I expected to find you deceased upon my return so really this is as much a shock to me as it must be for you.”

“A shock,” John repeats hollowly. “A ‘shock’?”

“A ‘shock’ being the most emotionally neutral and constructively versatile term I could- never mind, John. Forget I said it.”

John falls silent. A pair of schoolboys riding past on bicycles, whooping and hollering, earns a cursory glance. But he’s shifting his weight again- when had he gained that habit?

The woman pitter-patters nervously into view. “Oh, invite him in, John. You’ve got questions, as any friend would, and it isn’t right to have him answer them standing in the cold.”

John considers her for a moment, then mechanically steps aside without so much as a word of welcome. Sherlock sweeps in, the hem of his heavy coat whipping across John’s knees.

“I’m Mary,” the woman says as she leads him to a sitting room done up in beige and old chartreuse, and teak panelling in splotchy rows peeking out from beneath rugs of muted vermillion. She’s dressed the room herself- John would never have chosen a couch with that sort of tinted upholstery, or paid particular attention to the draping of the polyester lace curtains. A proper companion, this Mary, and she’s hustling them both into armchairs and knocking around the kitchen with one-two-three- _four_ clinks of porcelain against a plastic tea tray that’s probably got some sort of unassuming floral design- yes, roses, big, blooming red and yellow affairs sprayed across an off-white handler that accidentally matches the wallpaper. She’s fastidious without the fuss, then, and not so much of a miser as one who’s simply got her hands on the purse strings-

Ah. She lives here, then. Mary lives with John. So is she the alcoholic sister? What had John said her name was? That was ages ago; that was when they had first met and like most things, Sherlock had not bothered to retain something as fruitless as the name of his only flatmate’s adult sibling.

Sherlock doesn’t like the armchair he’s been given. He doesn’t say as much because John is refusing to look at him and Mary’s chattering and handing them both teacups and saucers but he shifts uncomfortably, his grand leather coat catching in the cushions and tangling about his calves. It’s a soft chair, sucking him down and lodging him there, meant for sitting and not much else. For the sedentary, like the rest of the furniture in John’s new flat.

John is drinking his tea so Sherlock does the same. Mary chooses to perch on John’s left armrest.

An uncomfortable thirty-seven seconds pass before Mary ventures, “We thought you were dead. Everyone thought so. At least, that’s what I heard from John. That it was a- a suicide.”

“It was,” Sherlock says to John, “but I was coerced into it by Moriarty.”

John’s head jerks up at the name. “Explain.”

“That day- what were we doing before I jumped?”

“You ought to know!”

“Please. This is necessary. What were you and I doing?”

Two years- John sifts back two years, blinking hard. “Moriarty stole the Crown Jewels. Opened the bank vault. Unlocked the prison cells at Pentonville. There was a trial, and then he pulled that Richard Brook caper and slandered your name. And then you called me and you were up on the roof of St. Bart’s and you made me watch as you-” He chokes. Sets down his tea. Mary places her hand on his and squeezes sympathetically.

“That’s exactly right. Near-identical to mine. Yes, it must not be so different at all-” Sherlock’s fingers are tapping wildly against the armrest. Yes, all must be as he feared. “Snipers,” he says finally. “Moriarty had snipers trained on you, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, and if I didn’t jump he would have fired. It’s as simple as that.”

 _Simple?_ he can almost hear John scream internally.

“Alright. Alright-” John says in that stuttering, distracted way he tends to fall into under stress. “But you- you’re here now. I don’t understand. Everyone under gunpoint, and you jumped, and yet-”

Sherlock sets his teacup down and leans back, steepling his fingers. “This is going to be a shock, John, but I need you to bear with me. I _am_ dead. The Sherlock you knew is dead.”

“Well, two years and a fake suicide could change just about anyone,” John replies scathingly.

“You’re not listening! I _did_ commit suicide. In this universe, I splattered upon pavement and stayed there. But in my timeline-”

“Timeline?” John echoes. “What the fuck are you going on about?”

Sherlock doesn’t miss the way Mary winces at the curse. Sensitive disposition, then.

“Two years ago in a parallel universe I- yes, _I_ jumped from St. Bart’s. The circumstances involving Moriarty were near-identical to yours, as far as I can tell, except he immediately retrieved and revived me for the purpose of supplying a body to be subjected to a scientific team researching human augmentation. Headed by your friend Mike Stamford, of all people. They were gruesome, grueling experiments, and when I was deemed perfect I was put under cryostasis, and remained there for over two hundred years until I was awakened by an Admiral Marcus of Starfleet, Starfleet being the deep-space exploratory, peacekeeping, and military service maintained by the United Federation of Planets, which will begin its foundation with the deployment of a solitary probe a few short decades from now. Sorry. You must have additional questions. You’ve certainly got that look.”

John wordlessly buries his head in his hands. Mary slips away to presumably put the kettle on again.  

“Awfully close, even for a sister, isn’t she?” Sherlock comments nonchalantly when she’s out of hearing.

“No, you idiot,” John says. “Mary is my _wife_.”

“Your wife.”

“Yes, my wife.”

Sherlock crosses his legs and passively accepts the sugar-encrusted pastry Mary’s heaped onto a plate, and he and John are worlds apart again.

\----

Mrs. Hudson has called his brother. And Lestrade. And Molly, and very well might have gone on to inform half of London if Mycroft had not politely but firmly forbade her.

“I admit that part of me hoped that I would find that you were the sole hegemon of this universe.”

“Shall I take that as a hint?” Mycroft has invited himself so far as the landing.

“I doubt that even you could puzzle this one out.”

“Why not skip the song and dance and for once, speak plainly?”

It’s not for drama, for the sake of pomp that Sherlock cannot bring himself simply tell Mycroft where he’s been. He wants his brother to try. He wants to see genius exerted.

“You’ve grown old, little brother,” Mycroft says with unprecedented concern and tenderness that sets Sherlock on edge.

“And there’s clue number two.”

Eyes rake over him. Mycroft’s noticing- the altered carriage of his body, the superadditive angularity of his every movement and breath, the power, through bruised, simmering beneath his skin. Sherlock would have pouted, cast himself into a chair, limbs thrown askance, conducted himself rakishly. Thrown a newspaper over his eyes and touted some childish barb about Mycroft’s weight until he blustered away. Khan Noonien Singh does none of those things.

“I have my theories,” Mycroft says slowly, eyeing the Starfleet insignia embroidered in silver upon Sherlock’s chest.

“I’m almost curious enough to entertain them.”

“At least that much hasn’t changed. That snark, and- you’ve been to see the Watsons, haven’t you?”

“Mrs. Hudson told you.”

“That, and you’ve got that terse little crinkle in your brow. Disappointment has never made itself more obvious.”

“He’s married, Mycroft. Married!”

“A calamity. But hopefully one you already foresaw. Always was the settling-down type, that John.”

To which Sherlock mutters hotly, “An unfortunate trait I always hoped I had turned him away from.”

“Back to your death and resurrection, though-”

“Not today, Mycroft.”

Mycroft’s diplomat’s composure turns ruddy with impatience. The last two years have made him as haggard as John- and he dares say Sherlock is the one who’s aged. “You and your penchant for _drama_ -”

“Not now,” Sherlock snaps with a touch of raptor’s rage. “Go home, Mycroft. Sleep on it. I know you’re used to immediately knowing why the earth turns, but give it a few more hours. The ghost of the matter will pay its respects.”

Mycroft takes his leave. But he lingers at the foot of the stairs- Sherlock can hear his huffing breaths- and Mrs. Hudson joins him, her voice rising and wavering with bird-like worry.

The eventual shutting of the door to 221B Baker Street is audible. Pointed. And Sherlock’s the maudlin brother?

With Mycroft’s departure, so flee any and all thoughts Sherlock spared for him.

And then he is alone.

It’s December 5th, so says a crimped calendar abandoned by the settee, and the flat is cold- cold without John, without his jests, his jabs, his loafers by the door. His jacket on the hook.

John- married?

He must have been devastated when Sherlock died. If his John hadn’t been kidnapped by Moriarty, he very well may have ended up like this universe’s counterpart. Broken, lonely, in need of a companion. And then there was Mary, trotting placidly his way with her neat blonde hair in a bun and seamstress’ fingers and cozily predictable domestic charm.

John, married, willingly linked and supposedly for life to someone who isn’t, well- _Sherlock_.

Sherlock doesn’t hate Mary. How could he loathe a dove? And, just like a blind, fluttering little creature, she had insisted all of her own accord that Sherlock should join them for Christmas dinner. She wants a tradition out of him. A habit of dining with the Watsons three times a week until her husband and his old _chum_ learn to reconnect. Mary is not a selfish woman, nor a petty one. She truly means well, in her blundering way where she is still firmly John’s keeper. And John had acquiesced. Chaperoned, strictly timed visits at the end of which he would retreat to his bed with Mary and Sherlock would have to call a cab.

Sherlock and John, on the same map at last, but with a sea between them that the latter, for reasons incomprehensible to the former, refuses to brave.

Oh, these things do best please him that befall so preposterously.

From his armchair- his? Yes, in the same spot, but the arms are mottled with chars he cannot place- he counts one hundred and twenty-three things that differ in this dimension from his own. The ashtray from Buckingham Palace, resting slantingly on the sill, is far more ornate than the one he had stolen for his late John Watson. The carpet is a ruddier burgundy and extends .375 inches more into the kitchen than he remembers. The coffee table by John’s armchair, once a delicately carved, Baroque affair, is a dull mahogany. The flats across the street are done up with French windows rather than the Venetian that figures in his memory. Scattered details- descending dominoes, a butterfly not landing here but _there_ and all of a sudden Mrs. Hudson, whom he can hear shrieking at her television set below, loves the Charlotte Bronte reboots that he could have sworn she despised.

They are reflections of his past warped in the surface of a mirror...

But he is not afraid of these trivialities. Everything else- everything substantial, that which lasts- he’ll recatalogue the details. Edit and delete and in a matter of days London will be under his thumb once more.

Yet he searches, even then, takes note of all the things that have remained constant. But there is one thing- one very specific thing and if it’s not here he’ll-

Ah.

He strides, power rushing to his fingertips, reaching and wrapping and then it’s in his hands again. His dearest, most precious- his violin. Over two hundred years come and gone and here it waited for him, perfectly intact in its velvet-lined coffin. And the tone-

He shudders as he runs his bow across the highest string. A single pressure point- the addition of vibrato- Too much, a little too strong, and if humans are glass then his instrument is little more than frost. In seconds he has it singing in his arms. Stroke- and stroke- and it hums and sighs for him, cries for him, turns a blind eye for him- There was a cafe, back in San Francisco, that Admiral Marcus once allowed him to visit, not that coffee has any effect on him- but he remembers that cafe because that day _Chaconne_ was playing from the speakers and he had clutched his drink and wanted to weep. He had not remembered who he was; he was Khan through and through in those days, but for a moment he skirted the lines of waking, and his terror at the unknown knocking within his skull had turned his grief to rage. Stroke- and stroke- and the sound consumes him, drowns and devours every memory of his old crew and John’s touch, and for a little while, he finds the will to surrender.

\---

It just doesn’t make any sense.

“Welcome!” Mary throws open the door and draws Sherlock into a one-sided hug which he reciprocates because he can feel John’s eyes upon him. She’s blathering on about his coat- after much deliberation he had chosen to fold Khan’s leather and hang it in his closet, and retrieved one of his Belstaff duplicates, which Mycroft had disconcertingly sought to preserve from moths. _Handsome_ , she says, _dashing_ , and she’s raking her fingertips through his hair, which he had painstakingly endeavored to soften with curls, because that is the way John remembers him.

Why John had chosen _this_ for a life partner, Sherlock has no idea. She’s got the same incessant positivity as a primary school teacher and perhaps Sherlock could be warmer, more pep and less bite, tea on hand and a roast in the oven, but since when had John particularly cared for friendly yet feeble company? John is at the end of the entrance hall, hands in his pockets, staring blankly and offering no answers.

“We’re so glad to have you over, I must apologize again for the bad timing last week,” Mary babbles on, “but John’s the new head at St. Andrew’s, and there’s all sorts of politics that get smoothed over at these dinners…”

Sherlock tunes her out, observing John closely. He’s grinding his teeth, blinking more rapidly than normal. But John notices Sherlock’s acute stare, and retreats into the dining room before Sherlock can file away anything else.

“... and she said it increased the department’s budget twice over! So now I’m bringing raspberry pies to every function!” Mary ends with a laugh, underlining her punchline. The absolute _partridge_. Sherlock smiles weakly, unable to muster more, and follows her into the dining room.

Again, John is standing in the doorway - to the kitchen, this time - but his arms are now crossed and the simple act is overwhelming because he has seen it hundreds of times in _his_ John, his John long gone, and already this one is not so different, and if one is equal to the other...

Mary’s still going on- about Chicken Kiev now, and if she were anyone else and not John’s wife, he and Sherlock would have snickered and exchanged surreptitious grins- but those were different days and at last, John speaks, gesturing stiffly at the table. “Shall we?”

Dinner is no better. The food, at least, is excellent - better than Mrs. Hudson’s, though Sherlock would sooner tickle a sleeping dragon than admit it to his landlady.

“You’ve no idea how long it’s been since I had a home-cooked meal,” Sherlock says, because pleasing Mary might, in turn, warm John back to him. “All starships have devices called replicators, and it takes a rather refined palate to be able to sense the difference between rearranged atoms and authentic food- I can, of course. Shattered the illusion immediately.”

“Starships,” John grunts. “You’re still going on about that?”

“You don’t believe me?”

John and Mary exchange a look. “I can believe a lot of things about you, Sherlock, but time travel? Alternate dimensions?”

Sherlock, expecting this reaction, had come prepared. Wordlessly, he draws the gilded pistol and the phaser he had taken from the Enterprise and sets them upon the table. Mary gasps and draws back, and Sherlock does not miss the way that John instinctively hushes her and squeezes her hands in comfort. But John, ever the soldier, even in this world, cannot help but feed his curiosity. He’s reaching for the guns, testing their weight.

“Just an old Victorian thing, isn’t it?” he says, running his thumb along the gold filigree.

“Pull the trigger and see,” Sherlock replies.

John takes aim at a vase covered in cherubs and pulls the trigger. Mary shrieks as a laser beam erupts from the pistol, disintegrating the flowers, vase, and all.

“Care to try the other?” Sherlock asks evenly as he watches the display assuage John’s doubts. “Then test my blood, my heartbeat, my bones, and you’ll see how I’ve changed. I would not lie about this. Why would I? Why would I leave you and what we had? What could I have possibly gained?”

And then John is looking at him, really looking, and Mary is momentarily forgotten, even as she rises and loudly laments the destruction. “Moriarty would, wouldn’t he? Steal you away from me. Put his mark on you. It’s got him written all over it.”

There he is. There’s his John, the one who threw himself into hellfire just to save him. John, who remembered Annette and held him-

“John!” Mary interjects. “Did you _have_ to shoot it in the house-”

And he is caressing her, brushing her hair back, soothing her with kisses. Sherlock’s hand unconsciously clenches around his knife.

“I’ll sweep it up,” she says, but even through her distress she plays the part of host, managing to smile at Sherlock because after all, _he_ didn’t shoot the gun. “Where’s the broom and dustpan, John?”

“Out back. By the hose. I can take care of it-”

“No, no. Sit with your friend.” She scampers out.

Now-

Sherlock reaches across the table, his hands closing over John’s, reminding him again of what he is and isn’t- too cold to be human, heartbeat so much slower than his- they haven’t touched yet. Is John frightened of something so obviously alien? “I missed you. You believe that, at least?”

“I do, but you must know how preposterous this all sounded-” And John is trembling, but he’s leaning into Sherlock’s touch and squeezing back, and Sherlock kisses him-

“Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing?” John exclaims, jerking away.

“I thought-” Sherlock feels blood rush to his cheeks. “You- and I-”

“I’m _married_ , Sherlock!”

“Well- yes, but-”

“You can’t just _kiss_ people, Sherlock. Especially married people whose wives made you dinner! It’s twisted. Absolutely twisted. And not at all surprising, coming from you.”

“But you said- you said you loved me.”

“What?”

“On the Enterprise- when you sent me away. When you saved me. You said you loved me, and I didn’t reciprocate because- frankly, I didn’t know. I didn’t know the depth of my own feelings for you until I arrived here, on your doorstep, and you were well and whole and as far as I have observed you are identical to him, in manner and speech and stance and even experience, and if I love him then it quite obviously follows that I love _you_.”

“I am _married_ , Sherlock,” John says again, but less harshly. “And there certainly was a time that I held a great level of affection for you. But that time is over. You died, and I had no idea why, because I never bought that ‘I’m-a-fraud’ bullshit. So I felt, sometimes, like you had abandoned me. What was I supposed to do? Die alone?”

“But I’m here now,” Sherlock presses. “Things can go back to the way they were. You can move back into the flat. We’ll solve cases again. Or go abroad! We can do whatever you like. I’ve returned, and we can try again.”

“No,” John says, fixing him with an expression of pity that burns.

“You can’t possibly love her!” Sherlock blurts out. “Her? Really? _Her_? If you want domestic, I can play domestic-”

“I don’t want you to change for me! Sherlock, I am glad you’re back. I am so, so glad. And I am sorry for everything that has happened to you, but you and I- we have to move on from here. We’re still friends. We can have our dinners. Mary likes you, alright? Let’s not ruin that. We can be together- the three of us.”

Mary clatters within earshot a moment later, silencing any protest Sherlock might have made.

“I didn’t like the thing anyway, John,” she’s saying as she sweeps up the ashy remains of her vase. “Wedding present from my great-aunt,” she explains to Sherlock. “You’ve actually both done me a great favor!”

John refrains from mentioning the altercation; Sherlock doesn’t apologize. Dinner resumes with Mary none the wiser. She has the gift of inoffensive conversation, and Sherlock can recognize talent when he sees it. But all of her amusing anecdotes and inquisitive questions do little to mask the deafening silence between the consulting detective and his blogger.

Sherlock tries a different tack. “Do you still write, John?” he asks, in the quick moment when Mary is chewing.

John is taken back for a moment. “No, not really. Haven’t the time.”

Mary, trying in vain to continue a dialogue between the two men, fills in, “Well, he does write grant proposals and patient observations and the like, and I really do think you can see a bit of his old style in them, right, John?”

John shrugs noncommittally, and goes back to his potatoes.

There are light refreshments and cake again, and Sherlock wonders if the John sipping tea is the same one that could murder Moriarty with a dagger of glass.

\--

Four days later Sherlock returns to the Watsons. And then again, three days after that, and both times they eat some kind of broiled bird and John listens to the tales of Khan Noonien Singh, but continues to pretend that Sherlock hadn’t attempted to reciprocate affections that were never present.

On December twenty-third, Mary invites Sherlock to Christmas dinner, and then the New Year’s Eve party she has planned, where all of John’s peers and coworkers and colleagues will be in attendance, and they’ve apparently heard all about Sherlock and are just dying to meet him.

(But _everyone_ is dying, well, everyone except perhaps Sherlock, but that’s still up for debate).

After obediently devouring his allotment of broiled pheasant, Sherlock realizes a craving for a cigarette. It’s been over two hundred years, after all, and old habits really do die hard.

He lets himself into their backyard. Mary’s still adding the finishing touches to the tiramisu, or the shortcake, or whatever sugary concoction she kept stowed away in the refrigerator.

It’s a small yard, thirty by thirty and no more, surrounded by high brick walls and tiered by trim rose bushes that gleam blue in the night.

Mere seconds after he lights his cigarette and briefly wonders whether he’s even physically capable of experiencing his old nicotine high, he hears the mesh door behind him creak and give way.

John, with his hands in his pockets-

“Tell me about the future.”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that. You know I’m already predisposed to talking for hours on end.”

“Anything. Your favorite things. Colonies on Mars.”

Sherlock regards the plume rising from his fingertips as he replies, “It was a marvelous but terrible thing, to realize that we were discovering one quadrant of the universe after another. Whether you believe that the world is finite or so much more- it was conquer or be conquered by the thought. Khan enjoyed the possibilities. I have no particular preference for this world or the other. Although I suppose I do miss having flight at my fingertips, should the whim take me.”

John smiles faintly. At least they’re mutually in mourning. “What have you been up to these days?”

“The usual.”

“I’ve no idea what that must mean for you now.”

“Homicides, John. Homicides and robberies and keeping Mrs. Hudson away from my laundry.”

That earns him a laugh. The little success makes him nauseous. “I think I miss it,” John whispers, as if it’s a secret.

“Which part?”

“All of it. The chase, catching cabs, the leads pinned to our walls. Pissing off Mycroft. Interviewing clients. The guns. Your pistol was the first gun I’d held in two years and I miss that weight in my hands. I miss the snap of the safety, and my finger curled around the trigger.”

“Is that all?” The cigarette is disintegrating too quickly. The stalk will burn out and then he’ll have to return to the house, and to Mary, and John won’t talk about guns anymore, and his voice brimming with desire will have to be stifled by cream and lace.

“And you, of course. I thought that much was obvious.”

“Two hundred years, John. I think I deserve a little validation.”

“I missed that too. The way you craved attention. Subtlety was never your art.”

Inhale- exhale- he can create clouds with his breath. He can birth a storm- he _is_ a storm-

“It can all be yours again, you know,” he says. “All you’d have to do is ask.”

“Sherlock.”

He can’t stand being reprimanded this way. He was akin to an emperor and see how easily John can reduce him to a child-

A light touch on his shoulder, and John is retreating-

“Oh, wilt thou darkling leave me?”  he murmurs, feeling the ache grow in his chest, in his veins.

“Excuse me?” John’s paused by the threshold.

“Go on,” he says loudly, smartly grinding the stub of his cigarette beneath his heel. “I’ll follow in a moment.”

He joins them as he promised. John is smiling and says “Yes, you ought to,” when Mary squeezes Sherlock’s hand and insists he should dine with them for Christmas. In the air hangs the knowledge that Sherlock would certainly be alone, if not for them. He could have chosen to be insulted- Khan Noonien Singh might have been, might have taken the jest to heart- but, blissfully- there is nothing. Like John, he has made up his mind. He had made it long before his cigarette, and not from malice, or anger, or any of the things that can so readily drown a person.

He eats what Mary gives him. He chuckles, and not out of obligation, when John tells stories about the hospital for him, and then the case of Bluebell the rabbit for Mary. The clock chimes ten when Sherlock quietly excuses himself. The Watsons think nothing of it and wait for him to return. He has five minutes, seven at most, before they will begin to wonder.

Will he live forever? They never said. He never asked. Maybe he has a few centuries ahead. Maybe he could find a way to put himself in stasis. He wouldn’t mind Starfleet, to be honest. Jim Kirk was not a bad man. Maybe in this universe, they could be friends. He could be his First Officer. Or maybe even the captain.

He doesn’t know if he’ll live forever, but in all certainty he will outlive Irene.

Those are thoughts for another day. They are thoughts he cannot sort out here. Somewhere, somehow, he will carve out his own haven- outside of London, his brother’s hold, the Watsons.

He pauses for a moment, sifting out John’s voice, a low, indiscernible murmur from the clinking of porcelain and glass, Mary’s soft laughter, the crackling of the fireplace. He commits it to memory, then slips a small card with the address of a chateau in Giverny into the pocket of John’s jacket, hanging on a hook beside Mary’s scarves.

He shuts the door softly behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. Thank you all so much for sticking with us even when we were distracted by college, hospitals and significant others. This story was never far from our thoughts, and your views and comments encouraged us to produce the best story that we could. We would love for you to comment about what you thought about the story as a whole, your favorite and least favorite characters, your favorite lines/moments- anything and everything. 
> 
> Also, we don't hate Mary. We actually adore the fuck out of her and had created the character before Season 3 of Sherlock aired. And to clarify this chapter further (especially for the Star Trek fans), yes, we just sent Sherlock to the MirrorVerse. 
> 
> Also also, J wants you to know that the story is full of Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Shakespeare and Ender's Game references - most of which E doesn't understand and didn't encourage, but there they are- and if you caught any, let J know in the comments.
> 
> Love you all and hope to see you again. Who knows? J is currently trying to convince E to watch Supernatural.


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